


I'll Be Home For Christmas

by wewerkak



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Broken Promises, Christmas, Gen, Home for Christmas, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, Missions Gone Wrong, Navy, Prisoner of War, Rescue, Survivor Guilt, Torture, U.S. Navy SEALs, black op
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 64,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28196181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wewerkak/pseuds/wewerkak
Summary: When the Navy calls, Steve answers. He's called up for a mission he can't tell anything about and despite knowing he shouldn't do that, he makes a promise that he'd be home for Christmas. But things don't always go as planned, especially with a danger magnet like Steve McGarrett.
Comments: 75
Kudos: 109





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write some Christmas fluff. This is what I came up with instead. I hope you'll like it anyway.

"I'm hit!"

It was like a line in the movie. But Steve was actually saying it. He heard a hard thud against his left ankle, then a searing burning sensation through both of his legs, but he had no idea how bad it was - only that he didn't have time to check it out. His legs felt torn and wrecked and he could feel warm blood forming at the bottom of both of his boots. As much as it hurt, there was too much stuff going on to pay attention to it.

It was his idea to take cover under the five-ton trailer he'd been driving across the desert. It wasn't ideal, but at the moment, it was all he had. So he, Lynch, and Richardson - two of the men under his command - hit the dirt and crawled under the huge vehicle to get away from the barrage of fire that surrounded them out of nowhere.

There hadn't been too many options. They couldn't tell how many people were shooting at them. It could have been hundreds judging by the amount of fire. However many there were, they wanted their team dead and they surrounded them.

It wasn't the army Steve had expected to call an enemy in this fight. No one shooting at them was wearing a uniform. They were just men, most of them in Western clothes. Just men, angry, screaming, deadly men who outnumbered them in a big way and they were picking them, one by one.

Guilt began to creep into his brain, making their situation even more dangerous, because he couldn't afford to think about the fallen men. Not now. He was responsible for the lives of his teammates. For bringing them home safe. And he'd failed. Jackson and Riley were dead already, and they've lost comms with the other half of the team who were nowhere in sight. But he could still hear the gunfire coming from somewhere, which meant at least some of them were alive. And as long as there were men standing, he had to make sure it stayed that way. He had to focus. To think.

Their team had wandered into the enemy killing field like lost lambs. Their little convoy of three vehicles had driven down the narrow streets of this medium-sized city. Buildings towered over them as they made several turns, searching for the place they've been sent to. They had given these guys plenty of time to gather their forces and surround them. Steve knew they had almost asked for this, but the orders were orders.

A constant barrage of bullets was pinging off their vehicles, nearby buildings, the ground all around them. The heavy explosions made the ground leap beneath Steve. It had to have been like shooting down into a pen of trapped animals. They didn't have anywhere to go, no escape, and little defense. The shots were coming so close, Steve could hear the zipping noise they made as they whipped past them to hit something solid a fraction of a second later. He was only halfway under the truck when the bullet struck his legs. He screamed that he had been hit and Lynch grabbed his arm and dragged him the rest of the way under cover. Seconds later, Richardson took a round in the upper arm.

There was blood everywhere.

Richardson groaned in pain as he shifted on his side, an annoyed grimace on his face. "What the hell happened? It was supposed to be easy. In and out. What's going on?"

The same question popped into Steve's mind, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. He ignored Richardson, his attention focused on what was going on around them. It was a miracle they weren't all dead. Their attackers were laying down a blanket of fire from every direction and angle.

"How are we with ammo?" Steve barked out.

"I've got five rounds left," Richardson replied with a heavy sigh.

"I'm out," Lynch followed. "What about you?"

"I'm out too," Steve said. His heart thudded in his chest knowing what that meant. He didn't need to be trained to assess their situation.

They were pretty much fucked.

They were defenseless. Worse, he knew people from his team were dying and it didn't matter he barely knew them. He still wanted them all to come home to their families. Too late for that, though.

A bullet struck one of the huge tires of the truck that served as their shelter and air hissed out, the vehicle slowly lowering and tilting over them. Another round pierced the radiator, adding a loud hiss to the noise around them. Steve was worried one of the rounds would find the gas tank and the whole thing would explode over them and they would go up in a ball of flame.

Everything was noise and confusion. Flying dirt and black smoke obscured Steve's vision. The stinging, metallic smell of cordite and the thick, choking smell of burning oil, plastic, and metal hung heavy in the air. He heard the people who were shooting at them calling to each other; the language was incomprehensible but the tone, the excitement in their voices that they had Americans cornered, was apparent in their speech.

It was impossible to know exactly what was going on, but there were some things Steve knew for sure. They were all in some deep shit, the kind of shit you only see in movies. His legs were killing him and he knew they were likely about to die. But he wouldn't accept it. It wasn't in his DNA.

Then he saw an RPG headed for their truck. He watched as it seemed to float on air in a deadly path to the side of the vehicle.

"RPG!" Steve screamed in warning. He cringed, ducked his head into his arms, thinking he was about to be incinerated in the approaching explosion. The round hit the side of the truck with a hollow thud and… nothing happened. A dud, Steve thought, but there was too much going on to feel any relief at that stroke of luck.

"We have to surrender," Lynch said. He said it as a matter of fact, as if it were a given. He scanned the area, still calm about everything, as if he thought he was starring in his own movie and wouldn't be the one to be hit in this climactic scene.

Steve wanted to hit stop, rewind, and go back to that part that didn't have them in it, but that wasn't going to happen.

"You hear me, McGarrett?" Lynch raised his voice, all the calmness fading from it. "It's your call."

Steve was dazed momentarily. Surrendering was the last thing he wanted to do, but there was no denying that the three of them cowering under the truck had no way to defend themselves and two of them were bleeding.

Help wasn't coming. This was a black op and all the men in the team were aware of that when they agreed with it. That meant not only they were alone in this and no one would come and help, but no one would find out they'd been here or what their objective was. No one would bring their bodies home if they died out here.

"Hey, you still with us?" Richardson screamed at him. "Lynch is right. That's our only option."

He hated to admit it, but Lunch's idea to surrender really did seem as their only option. Well, unless he counted certain death as an option. They'd at least have a chance if they surrendered, right? He could still bring some of his men home.

The shooting started to slow down, but that wasn't good news. The bullets were only coming from the enemy now. No one on their side was shooting anymore.

"McGarrett!" Lynch yelled waiting for the command, panic filling his eyes.

The thought of surrendering petrified him. Interrogations, beatings, torture - it all flickered in front of his eyes. He'd been through all that before, yet this time it was different. This time he had something to lose.

Danny.

Grace and Charlie.

His family.

How the hell did he even end up back here?

But Lynch was right, they had to give up. "Okay," he said, his stomach flipping upside down. "We surrender."

He exchanged looks with the two men who nodded in agreement, and slid back, then stepped out from under the truck, his hands raised. Richardson and Lynch followed suit.

And just like that, Steve became a prisoner of war.

Just like that, he broke a promise to someone very important to him. A promise he'd come home for Christmas.

**_*to be continued*_ **


	2. Chapter 2

With hands in the pockets of his sweatpants and worry in his eyes, Danny stood in the living room, staring at the Christmas tree which still needed decorating. It was Christmas Eve and usually, he’d have it done by now, but this year no one was in a jolly mood.

“Danno?”

His daughter's voice and a soft touch on his arm tore him from the thoughts swirling in his head. He shifted his haze to her and flashed her the best smile he managed to fake. “You here to help me, monkey? Your brother decided to throw a tantrum last time I asked him to help me light that thing up.”

Grace sighed and looked at the door, as though waiting for a Christmas miracle. “Charlie said uncle Steve said we’d do it all together this year.”

“I know,” Danny said, doing his best not to show how his heart cracked with Grace’s excuse for her brother. “And I’m sure uncle Steve would help if he could. But it looks like he’s not coming home on time. So let’s decorate the tree ourselves, okay?” 

“Do you think he’s all right?” Grace asked, voicing Danny’s thoughts out loud. 

“Is he all right? You’re talking about Steve, monkey,” Danny said with much more confidence than he felt. “Of course he’s all right. He’d done this a hundred times before he became a cop. He might be an animal, but he can take care of himself.” 

The truth was, Danny wasn’t sure either. It’s been weeks since he’d last heard from Steve and it was to be expected but didn’t worry him any less. Especially after their last video call and the confidence radiating from Steve when he made a promise he’d go home soon and be here right on time to spend Christmas with him and the kids. 

“Come on,” he said before Grace could object anything. “Go get your brother. We need to get this done.”

Grace left without a word and he watched her disappear upstairs, then turned his gaze back to the empty tree that was missing its decorations. Just like the tree, they were missing something important too. He imagined Steve being somewhere in a combat zone, going all out super SEAL on his objective, whatever the hell that was, and he could feel the chill run down his spine. 

For some reason he couldn’t explain, he had a sickly feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever thinking about his best friend these past few days. A feeling he couldn’t shake. A feeling something was very wrong. But it was probably nothing and Steve was just too busy trying to get everything done so he could come home as soon as possible.

He turned his gaze to the window, a worried squint on his face as he stared into the darkness, and whispered, “Merry Christmas, buddy. Wherever you are.”

* * *

Before Steve had a chance to fully crawl from under the truck and get on his feet, he was grabbed and dragged out roughly. Despite knowing it was pointless, his instinct was to struggle, not wanting to suffer the indignity of being dragged from his shelter against his will.

But in a second he landed in the dirt face first and his arms were painfully twisted behind his back. A knee on the back of his neck and hands all over him prevented him from standing up as his hands were being bound with what felt like a rope.

And then boots, sandaled feet, weapon butts came out from everywhere, hitting his arms, his head, his wounded legs. He twisted and tried to protect his head and body, but the kicks and the triumphant shouts of the angry men around him went on and on.

A sudden violent jerk on his wounded legs made him scream out in pain. Agony washed up his legs and exploded through him. Putting up a fight dimmed to nothing after that.

He had no idea how many of them there were. They were all yelling at once and he didn’t understand a word of it, only that they were furious, they were wild with victory, they were really hurting him, and he wasn’t convinced that they were done killing people. He thought they might literally tear him apart in their frenzy.

The pummeling continued for a long time; finally, one major kick connected squarely with Steve’s head, knocking his helmet off, and the Kevlar protection went rolling away. Then a man who kicked Steve’s helmet aside said something to others and the beating stopped.

A couple of the men grabbed Steve and hauled him to his feet, attempting to stand him up on his shattered legs. He couldn’t stop himself from a pained moan, no matter how hard he tried.

There was little sympathy from them, though, but a lot more yelling, everyone shouting at once. Steve was on his feet long enough to see that Lynch and Richardson were getting the same treatment he had received. A wild-looking group of men were kicking, slapping, and pushing them around, making Steve’s blood boil in his veins. Steve had glimpses of more people pouring out of buildings and gathering around them, swarming over their truck.

Since it was still dark and he couldn’t see past their truck, he had no way of knowing how many of his men have been wounded or killed. But there was still hope some had gotten out and Steve wouldn’t let that hope go. 

People were climbing into the truck, where all of their gear was packed. A mob danced around, waving their arms in the air, dancing to triumphant whoops and shouts. They hauled out Steve’s rucksack and he was mentally going through the list of things packed in there. A great relief washed over him when he realized there was nothing of great value to the enemy. Nothing that might endanger them or the safety of their country.

He saw people emptying the truck of everything inside as flashes between the mass of people who were pushing and shoving him from side to side. They shouted at him, screaming and taunting.

The men who held him began to drag him across the street. They gripped his arms roughly and hauled him away with his legs trailing behind, leaving a path of his blood in their tracks. The mass of men parted as they went. Steve kept his head up despite the obvious defeat, taking in the frenzied anger in so many faces. But he was woozy with the searing agony and could barely see through the pain in his legs. 

They propped Steve up and he realized they were trying to push him into the backseat of a vehicle. He didn’t want to get in that car. He began struggling again, an instinct deeply ingrained in him. He caught a glimpse of Lynch and Richardson, bound and beaten up, being forced into another, bigger vehicle. Richardson’s eyes met his for a moment before both of them were shoved inside.

Steve struggled to get another glimpse of them. He wanted to yell their names out of instinct, to run to them and set them free, but he knew he was helpless and there was nothing he could do for them. 

A hard blow low into his stomach cut his struggles short, and a vehicle with two of his men driving away was the last thing he’d seen before a dark, smelly sack was forced over his head and secured tightly on his neck. It was tight enough to make breathing his priority, and he barely noticed when he was pushed inside the vehicle.

He didn’t know how many men were in the vehicle with him when they moved, but he was sitting between the two of them, the images of what he knew lay ahead rushing through his mind. He couldn’t let it happen. He had to do something. Break free and find others. Fight their way out somehow. Regroup and come back for their fallen friends. Bring them home. All of them. Dead or alive.

Determined to give it a go, he waited for his chance, listening for noises as they made a few turns on a bumpy road, and when he thought they were far enough from the big crowd of enemies, he struck at the man on his left. But with the agony rippling through his legs, his hands bound and a sack on his head, it was over before he had a chance to really hurt someone.

Someone slapped him hard enough to snap his head back. But that didn’t stop him from pointless struggling, from trying to break free. The angry shouts became louder, and once again the blows started raining down at him from both of his sides. 

His legs weren’t the only source of pain by the time they made a sharp turn and screeched to a stop. He could hear a gate closing behind them. The men got out of the car, no longer yelling. Someone grabbed him by his arm, hauled him out of the car, throwing him roughly to the ground. 

Someone spoke, and it seemed as he was barking instructions, because soon enough, Steve was picked up and dragged somewhere, showing no concern for his legs. He could tell from the way the soft sand under his feet changed into something colder and hard that he was now inside.

Once again he was shoved to the ground, but this time no one bothered to pick him up. He could hear the voices around him, but he couldn’t tell what was going on. He jerked when he felt a hand on his throat, but he realized someone was loosening the sack on his head and relaxed a little. Hungrily, he gasped for air as soon as the hood was gone, bringing the precious oxygen and the light back to his world.

The room he sat in was windowless and plain, save for the multiple colorful carpets scattered around the floor. He leaned his back against the wall, his legs splayed in front of him. Scanning around, he had to ask the same questions all over again. Where was he? Where were Lynch and Richardson? Who else was alive? Who was dead?

There were four angry-looking armed men with him in the room, none of them looking particularly pleased by Steve’s presence. It seemed like a long time that he sat there, his brain running away with thoughts of what might happen next. Waves of pain pulsed in his legs, always bringing him back to the reality of his circumstances. 

Then a uniformed man came in. He had a thick mustache, black hair, and eyes to match. His uniform shirt was starched and tucked into his pants and a large buckle gleamed from his belt. His boots were polished to a bright shine, his pant legs perfectly creased, centered, and tucked neatly into his boots. He walked toward Steve, talking conversationally, as if his captive would understand Arabic. Steve had no idea what he was saying, but that didn’t seem to bother the guy. He kept right on talking and Steve kept his mouth shut.

When done talking, the soldier walked toward Steve, who glared at him with all the defiance he could muster, and yanked Steve’s dog tags off his neck. The man read Steve’s name printed on the small metal discs and shoved it into the pocket of his trousers. Then he just stood there, his eyes never leaving Steve, and stared at him for a long moment before he ordered everyone out of the room. 

There was no way of telling what the guy was thinking. His face was calm, stoic. Not angry, like everyone else’s, not sympathetic either. Steve opened his mouth to say something when the man abruptly turned around and left without a word, closing the door behind him and leaving Steve alone in the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. His legs were throbbing and his blood was staining the old carpets. He was alone only for a few minutes when three men came in, one armed with a video camera. 

This felt familiar. Almost like deja vu, because he’d been there before, hadn’t he? It might have been a different country and a different situation, but the memories of nearly having his head chopped off by the Taliban still haunted him sometimes. 

But it didn’t seem to him they were about to execute him. They assembled themselves, the man with the camera directly in front of Steve, the other two flanking him. 

The man on the right said something in Arabic and the one on the left translated it into English. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Despite knowing it was pointless, Steve didn’t answer. They knew his name from his dog tags. They probably knew much more by now, but the camera in the room hinted to him they wanted him to say it for the record, not for the information.

He didn’t.

“What’s your name?” The man repeated, louder this time. 

Even if they didn’t know, he could tell them. He knew the Code of Conduct very well and he was well aware of the section saying that if taken prisoner, he could give his name, rank, and date of birth. But he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of answering that, especially not on camera.

The man on the right said something again and the one English-speaking translated another question. “Why did you come to our country?”

Now, this was something he couldn’t tell them even if he wanted to, and he was certain they would stop asking nicely soon, but for the time being, the men’s voices remained calm and they all remained standing where they were, leaving Steve alone. 

After another silent treatment, Steve expected either more questions or force applied in an attempt to get the answers, but none of it came, much to Steve’s confusion. 

Instead, they started talking to each other and Steve watched them for a minute or so, then they all left again. He was both, surprised and relieved that they’ve left so quickly. It hadn’t been much of interrogation and he wondered why he hadn’t been asked any difficult questions. Maybe they were waiting for instructions and simply weren’t prepared. The lack of questions provided little relief, though. If these guys weren’t ready to ask the questions, Steve wondered if they were waiting for help from someone else who was.

He was almost delirious with pain and he wanted to inspect the damage on his legs, but it was dark again and his hands were still bound in the position that caused him even more pain. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there like that, wondering if he’d be left to bleed out and die. 

Then the door opened again and in walked Lynch and Richardson, much to Steve’s relief. They were both pretty banged up, but they were alive. The relief was short-lived, though, because there was no one else from their team. Where the hell were they? Steve refused to believe they were all dead.

Richardson was shoved roughly to the ground and Steve winced for him when his knees crashed onto the floor with a thud, but the man didn’t make a sound. The eyes of the armed guards never left any of them as one of the men holding Lynch took out the knife and cut through Lynch’s restraints before shoving him inside. The guard said something to him as though Lynch could understand, pointing to Steve, then to Richardson, and once again their captors left.

“Bastards,” Richardson muttered and scrambled to his feet with a pained groan. 

Lynch was by him in a second, untying his hands, then he dropped to his knees to do the same for Steve. “You okay, McGarrett?” he asked. 

Steve rubbed at his wrists, relieved at the feeling of having his hands free again despite the uncomfortable feeling of blood circulating into them again. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he lied. “You?”

“Never better,” Lynch flashed him a grin, then pointed at Steve’s legs. “Let me look at that.” 

Steve nodded and groaned when Lynch rolled up the fabric of his pants to get a better look at the wounds, agony washing over him.

“Sorry,” Lynch muttered and kept inspecting the injury. “I’ve got to do this.”

Both men looked dog tired and Steve felt like it too. He had no idea how long they’d been there, and they didn’t catch much sleep in the past few days either. They were both covered in sand and Steve could tell that they had gotten the same kind of beating he had. Richardson had blood on his face. He had been shot in the arm and just like Steve’s, his wound was untreated and still bleeding.

“Shit, that doesn’t look good, man,” Richardson said when he shuffled closer to Steve and got a look at Steve’s legs. 

Lynch unlaced Steve’s ruined boots carefully, and slowly slipped them off his feet. 

Steve’s desert-brown suede boots were now almost black with his blood. He could feel his blood pooling around his toes and had felt it squishing around in there with each painful step he had been forced to take. His feet were covered in blood, his socks soaked through. He was determined that he wouldn’t scream out in pain, and he managed to suppress the need to do that, but it took all of his will. He moaned loudly. 

He looked down to inspect the damage himself. He needed to know how bad it was, and it seemed Richardson had been right. It wasn’t good.

Both legs had gaping wounds. There was a large hole on the outside of his left ankle, another larger hole on the inside, the ragged tears looking like raw chicken flesh. The right leg was worse. At least a one-inch hole was on the inside of his right leg above the ankle. Somehow the bullet must have taken a turn because it had come out near the back left side of his calf. 

“He needs a doctor,” Richardson said to Lynch, who ignored his rising concern.

“Help me get his jacket off,” Lynch said to Richardson. “It’s cleaner than mine. We have to slow down the bleeding.”

Richardson nodded and began helping Steve out of his uniform without further delay, then ripped the fabric into several strips.

“Look,” Lynch said, meeting Steve’s glassy gaze. “It’s going to hurt, but I need you to stay awake, all right? No passing out.”

“Okay,” Steve mumbled, well aware of the situation. 

Richardson had several pieces of the cloth torn and ready. 

“Deep breaths,” Lynch reminded Steve as he began wrapping up the wounds. 

It hurt so bad it took Steve a long time to catch his breath after the horrible wincing pain. Even after the initial shock subsided, the pain continued to throb and tear at him. He knew there were more pressing issues they had right now, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever walk again.

“You’ll be okay,” Lynch said. “It’s just soft tissue damage.”

Steve knew his comrade was full of crap. He could feel that bones were chipped or broken in his left leg, that the ragged gashes weren’t just flesh, that muscles and more was involved. But he didn’t expect the truth from Lynch. He’d lie to him too if the roles were reversed. 

Soon, both men became no more than a blur and Steve felt nausea rising in his throat. 

“Stay with me, McGarrett,” Lynch said as he kept wrapping up his legs. 

Steve could feel himself tremble, his teeth rattled in his head, and he was drifting, losing the sense of where he was or what was going on. He was going into shock.

Lynch’s hard slap came out of nowhere and gave Steve a good stinging smack across the face. “What the-” Steve growled at Lynch, his mouth gaping for a moment, wondering why he’d done that. 

“What did I just say? Huh? Stay with me,” Lynch repeated and didn’t bother with an apology for smacking his commander.

It took a minute for it to sink in, but the slap brought Steve around enough to realize Lynch was trying to help. He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to regain control of himself. 

“That’s it. Almost done here,” Lynch’s voice came again.

When Lynch was done, Richardson shuffled closer and lifted Steve’s legs into an elevated position to prevent Steve from going into shock again. 

“Your arm is next,” Lynch said to Richardson, who held Steve’s legs up on his shoulder. “How bad is it?”

“Through and through,” Richardson said. “I’ll live.” 

Lynch nodded, and inspected the other’s man wound, then wrapped it up as well as possible given the limited resources. By the time he was done, the blood was already seeping through the fabric on Steve’s leg. It was obvious he wouldn’t make it without proper medical care, but he appreciated the effort of his men. Before long, he found himself drifting again.

He closed his eyes, briefly aware of the conversation between Lynch and Richardson, and then opened them again when loud banging echoed through his head. It turned up it was Lynch making the noise, banging at the door with his fist.

“Hey! You can’t do this!” Lynch yelled. “We need a doctor! You hear me you dirty pieces of shit? We’ve got the right for the medical treatment!”

Steve knew Lynch was right, and as prisoners of war they should get a doctor if needed, but the way they’ve been treated so far told him their captors didn’t follow the rules of the Geneva Convention and it appeared they didn’t care if their prisoners died or not.

Lynch’s voice grew more and more desperate, while Richardson tried to remain calm and usher comforting lies to Steve. Then the voices faded along with their faces, and silent apologies to Danny and the kids were the last thing on Steve’s mind before he closed his eyes and gave in to the exhaustion.

***to be continued***


	4. Chapter 4

Steve came around, his vision blurry and legs throbbing with agony. It took him a minute to remember where was he and what was going on and he let it sink in, quietly watching what was happening around him.

They were still alone, locked up in that small, dark room, but Lynch and Richardson obviously didn’t sit around and wait for their captors to open that damn metal door and let them out. They were both checking out the room, looking for a way out, the nervous energy radiating from both of them. 

Lynch stopped when he noticed Steve was awake and watching them. He scooted over to Steve and looked at his wounds. “Hey. How are you feeling?” he asked. 

Steve could barely see through the haze of pain and he knew the makeshift bandages were soaked through with his blood by now. His head was in a spin, and his parched throat felt like sandpaper. His skin was covered in sweat, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He’d be in trouble if the sweating stopped. “Good,” he mumbled. “You got something? Anything to help get us out of this place?”

Lynch shook his head no. “But they gotta come back in some time, right? We’ll be ready for them. Don’t worry about it, okay? Just rest and let us take care of it. We’ll get us out of here and get you the doctor. You’ll be all right.”

It was yet another lie, but Steve was too exhausted from the unexpected fight, too weak from blood loss, and in too much pain to argue. He kept floating in and out of consciousness, unaware of how much time had passed, but it felt like forever. It must’ve been a long time, though, judging by how much worse he felt every time he came around, and how exhausted Lynch and Richardson looked like. It would only make sense to leave them locked up, let their wounds, exhaustion, and dehydration to take care of them, to weaken them further.

Whenever awake, Steve could see and hear everything that was going on around him, but it didn’t seem to register in his brain anymore. He snapped to reality, though, when he heard loud yelling followed by shooting echoing in the small room, and forced his heavy eyelids open to examine the cause. He pushed himself up on his elbows, groaning in pain but determined to get a better look.

The chaos in the doorway consisted of two of their captors on the floor, being held down by Lynch and Richardson, and more mean-looking guys with their AK-47s aimed at all of them, including Steve. They all looked pissed off.

“That’s enough!” One man shouted, his face contorted in anger as he stared at his captives. “Release my men or we’ll shoot you.”

“Not gonna happen,” Lynch barked back, standing his ground. None of them moved.

It was a standoff they couldn’t win and Steve was well aware of that, yet he understood the determination of his men not to back off after their obviously failed attempt of an escape. One look at the man who seemed to be in charge was enough to see the guy wasn’t joking and none of these men would hesitate to pull a trigger. Lynch and Richardson would never be fast enough to prevent it, let alone Steve who was barely clinging to the consciousness at this point. 

“Last chance,” the man in charge said. “I’ll count to three.”

Steve’s blood ran cold in his veins. The men didn’t move, adding up to an already tense atmosphere in the room.

“One.”

There wasn’t much to do about it, yet Steve’s brain was working as hard as it could, given the circumstances. No matter how hard he tried, though, the situation assessment was pretty much as easy as back on that street when he agreed to surrender. Once again, he didn’t see another option other than letting the rest of his team get slaughtered.

“Two.”

He made his decision. “Stop it,” he croaked, looking at his comrades. “Stand down.”

Their captors’ eyes never left them as Lynch and Richardson obeyed and reluctantly let go of the men buckling beneath them and stood aside, glaring daggers at their captors. 

“That was a smart decision,” the man in charge said, still watching all of them, the guns of his men still aimed at the three of them. “We’re moving now. This place isn’t big enough for all of you. But before you go, let me explain how things are gonna work. It is simple, really. You behave and we let you live. Try something again and I’ll personally make sure not even your own mothers could recognize your corpses. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

A threat hit a little close to home, Steve’s mind instantly traveling back in time. To North Korea, to Freddie’s mutilated body. He didn’t want that for anyone, let alone the men under his command. He quickly pushed the painful image out of his mind.

His vision got hazy again, and before he knew it, he was roughly jerked up on his feet, and for a moment, the agony of that whiting out everything else. It took all of his will not to scream in pain while his hands were being bound behind his back once again.

The last thing he saw was that his friends’ hands were tied up under the vigilant watch of armed guards, then some dark and damp-smelling piece of cloth obscured his vision. 

As they’ve been led somewhere, Steve wondered if others would be wherever they were going. Once again he couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that the three of them were it. That they were the only ones who survived. The names and faces of everyone else in the team flew through his head. It was still too much to contemplate that they were all dead. 

He couldn’t shake the feeling of responsibility for them. Sure, he knew that in the ambush there was little he could’ve done for them, but he should’ve seen that coming. Even now he had no idea where did it all go wrong. Was it his plan? Or wrong intel? One way or another, his men were his responsibility and he hadn’t seen any of them, except Lynch and Richardson, since they’d been attacked. But maybe, just maybe, they’d be wherever they were being led to. Steve hoped that was the case. 

All of it flew through his head as they were loaded into a vehicle. 

He was walking barefoot. His feet were too swollen, and anyway, his boots were ruined by all the blood that had covered them. Any discomfort he felt in his feet from the rocky ground was nothing next to the pain in his legs as he climbed into some kind of a van and he couldn’t stop a loud moan escaping his throat when he was roughly shoved to the floor.

Richardson must’ve been close and he must’ve heard him, because he spoke to Steve, “Come on, McGarrett. I’ve heard the tales about your time in teams. That tiny hole in there is nothing you couldn’t handle, ” Richardson said and Steve couldn’t help but smile through the pain. Those wounds on his legs were anything but tiny, but once again he was grateful for his friends’ faith in his abilities.

“It’s nothing,” he slurred. “I’m fine.”

“Damn sure you’re fine. Just keep hanging in there, buddy.” Richardson was about to say more, but his voice was shut off with a man shouting and a sound of flesh hitting flesh, immediately followed by Richardson’s quiet grunt.

“La tatakalam!” the guard yelled. “No talking!”

“Son of a-” Richardson didn’t get to finish an insult before Steve heard another punch.

“La tatakalam!”

Steve’s blood boiled in his veins. “Hey,” he said before he could stop himself. He couldn’t do much for his men in his current shape and position, but he could still redirect their captors’ anger to himself instead of them. “You got a prob-” Something hard smacked him through his face before he could finish, snapping his head back and sending it into a relentless spin. A familiar metallic taste filled his mouth almost immediately. 

“La tatakalam!” The guard’s voice sounded furious and soon, other voices joined him. 

Steve sat up as much as he could, leaning his back to the wall of a vehicle, but decided it wasn’t the best idea to antagonize their captors even more, so he kept his bleeding mouth shut. Lynch and Richardson followed suit.

He had no idea how long they drove, and staying awake turned up to be a challenge. The entire trip, the thoughts of where they might be headed or what might happen next kept Steve lucid enough not to slip away. He knew the possibility of torture was very real, but he couldn’t afford to dwell on that. 

Eventually, the vehicle came to a stop, and Steve was led into the building, down a hallway.

Every step was torture. He was breathless and woozy with the agony. The pain of his bare feet pressed into the tiny gravel was barely noticeable. His legs felt shattered beneath him, but he sucked up the pain and walked, hobbled along as best he could.

Then he was led into a room and pushed onto a chair. His hands remained tied, but his blindfold was removed, and Steve had to blink several times to adjust his eyes to the artificial light. 

A flash of light blinded him for a second, and he realized it was coming from a camera on the phone. The armed men in uniforms took several pictures of his face, wearing their triumphant smiles, as though Steve was some kind of trophy. 

He struggled to get a glimpse of his friends, but he didn’t see any of them.

There was a lot of noise and a lot of new faces around him. It was immediately clear who was in charge. He was a stern-looking officer with a thick mustache, straight in bearing and serious looking. He stared Steve down, waited while the guards patted Steve down head to toe, making sure he didn’t have anything with him. 

“If you do as you’re told, you’ll be okay,” the man in charge said in pretty good English. “If you don’t, you will be shot.”

The way these guys looked, Steve had no doubt they would do what they had threatened.

Except for the man in charge, there were two men wearing a long robe and a dark-colored turban pacing around the room like predators circling their prey. The other two in uniform standing by Steve’s sides, all of them watching him like hawks. 

He kept looking around, to get a better picture of the place and his captors, but obviously, one of the guards didn’t like Steve’s curiosity. He used the barrel of his AK-47 to push Steve’s head down so that his eyes were lowered. 

Something about the way the guard forced Steve’s head down pissed him off. He was sitting there with his shot-up legs, his hands tied, surrounded by men with weapons. What difference would it make if he watched what was going on? And it wasn’t like he hadn’t already had a good look at all of them. 

He risked it and raised his head back up, not missing the serious expressions on all of their faces. It was obvious that his interrogation was about to start.

***to be continued***


	5. Chapter 5

Steve was ready.

He was ready for relentless questions, brutal beating, torture… all of that. But he wasn’t ready for the serious, but calm face of the man in charge, who spoke to Steve in an equally calm tone.

“I’m Major Haddad, and these men are under my command,” the guy said, holding Steve’s gaze. “As I said before, you’ll be okay as long as you do as told. Unlike some of my brothers, I am not a cruel man, and I would hate to make an example of you, so I expect you to respect me and all of my men.” Haddad’s voice was calm and assured, which threw Steve off balance and added to his confusion. “Understood?”

Steve snorted and continued to glare at him in disbelief. Did this guy really think he’d respect anybody holding him captive and treating him like this? He expected his response to be met with anger, threats, and maybe even violence, but it didn’t even change Haddad's stoic face, let alone make him do something.

“Now, tell me your name,” Haddad said.

Here was it again. Steve knew what Haddad’s point was. It was all about power, and making Steve say a simple thing like that, the information they had a long time ago, was a good way to start showing it. 

Steve didn’t answer him. He stared directly in front of him, determined to make a stand, however futile it might’ve been. Haddad waited for good thirty seconds. Didn’t repeat the question. Didn’t push Steve for a response. 

“What’s your name?” he said eventually. His voice was still calm, matter-of-fact.

Again, Steve didn’t answer.

“Where do you come from?” Haddad asked after what Steve counted as another thirty-second pause.

Steve pursed his lips, breathing through his nose. It was a feeble show of strength, but he wasn’t going to give them anything. 

“Why did you come to our country?”

No answer.

“Who do you report to?”

Steve remained silent.

“What’s your name?” Haddad asked again. 

Haddad proceeded to repeat the same questions for a second time. And then a third and fourth. A set thirty seconds between each question. Steve didn’t say a single word. Haddad’s voice remained placid, emotionless, even, throughout. No intimidation, no threats. 

The situation was unnerving. Disturbing. Steve didn’t know why they were being so calm so far, but he knew they would try to break him somehow. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t fail, couldn’t let everyone down. Put their lives at risk.

But he knew that this timid questioning would just be the start of his ordeal. Things were going to get a whole lot worse from here. They didn’t need to intimidate or threaten him to tell him that. Steve just hoped, in the end, something would give.

He had never been broken before. But everyone has a breaking point. Steve just hoped they wouldn’t find his.

“Okay, we’re done here,” Haddad said and then switched back to Arabic, telling something to the guards in the room.

Steve heard footsteps approaching him from behind. He hadn’t even known anyone was back there. 

Before he knew it, his world once again turned black as a thick cloth bag was placed over his head. Once again, he was led through the corridor, half-carried, half forced to walk. He could feel himself zoning out, his consciousness slipping further and further with each step he’d made. Finally, they came to a stop, and the blindfold was removed once again. 

Steve found himself standing in the open door of the cell, one of many lined up in a row, reminding him of a regular prison. The cell was no bigger than seven by seven feet, though. There was nothing inside the tiny space but a dirty bucket thrown on the equally dirty concrete floor. 

Two of the men didn’t let go of their strong grip on Steve’s arms as someone cut through the ropes on his wrists. Then a rough hit to his back came out of nowhere, and Steve was shoved inside, landing on the hard floor face first. Instinctively he shot up his arms to protect his head, and his elbows took the brunt of the force instead.

Before he had a chance to scramble himself back up, he heard a loud bang of the door closing, and a key clicking in the lock. He watched the guards leave through the metal bars, and allowed himself to relax as soon as the voices faded to nothing. 

He sat there in silence and couldn’t help but wonder how pissed Danny would be. The last time Steve had a chance to talk to him it seemed there was one last job to do and he’d go home. A few days, a week tops. So he made a promise he shouldn’t have and now Danny would go crazy with worry because of him. 

It seemed like a long time that he sat there with his legs splayed in front of him, his brain running away with thoughts of Danny and home. Then another uniformed man came in, followed by two armed guards. He peered at Steve tentatively from behind the bars as if asking permission before stepping all the way into his cell, which was plain ridiculous. They could do whatever they wanted, and Steve couldn’t stop them. 

There was a difference between this man and the rest of their captors. There was kindness in his face. He was in his late thirties, medium height, and very slender. His thin mustache outlined a mouth that hid a small smile. His eyes showed concern and intelligence.

“I am the doctor,” he said to Steve in English, spoken as if he had rehearsed the words in his head a few times before he said them. “I am to look at your legs.”

That added to Steve’s confusion. All the threats and beating and shoving around didn’t make an impression his captors cared whether he lived or not. Maybe this was Major Haddad’s way of proving his words about not being a cruel man, an act of kindness to give Steve a reason to play nice and do as told, to give him a false impression of safety. Maybe he just knew he couldn’t get any answers from a dead prisoner. Steve would bet on the latter, though.

Steve nodded, because the doctor seemed to be waiting for his permission. He carried a traditional-looking medical bag, and with a few words over his shoulder, he entered the room followed by a younger soldier who avoided looking Steve in the eye. The second one shut the door close and stood guard outside.

The doctor knelt down and began unwrapping the soaked through fabric on Steve’s legs. Steve gritted his teeth to prevent a scream when the doctor cleaned each of four entry and exit points, dabbed away at them, and doused them in something that looked and smelled like iodine and hurt so bad it took Steve’s breath away for a moment. Without a word, the doctor then wrapped Steve’s legs neatly in gauzy bandages and Steve watched as more red seeped through almost immediately. Steve appreciated the effort, but knew a simple treatment like this was just a very short-term solution, if any at all. Yet he was grateful for the wounds to be clean, as it’d lower the risk of serious infection in a dirty place like this.

When done with Steve’s legs, the doctor pulled out a small plastic bottle with water and passed it to Steve. 

Without any hesitation, Steve took it. This was the first time in forever he was offered something to drink, and he downed the bottle in three large gulps. It felt so good to soothe the burning ache in his parched throat.

“Thanks,” Steve croaked, wondering when did water become such a luxury.

The doctor nodded, rummaged his bag, and took out a needle with a syringe. He must’ve noticed how Steve’s eyes widened, because he said, “It’s a pain medication. You have to take it.” 

“No,” Steve said as though he had any say in anything at this place. “I don’t want it.”

Being drugged was the last thing he needed. He had to remain alert as much as possible, to focus on getting himself and others out of this mess. Which reminded him he hadn’t seen his men since they’d been moved, and he didn’t like the idea of them being out of his sight with people like these walking around. 

The doctor’s voice snapped him back from his worry-filled thoughts. “It will help you.”

Steve squinted at him and it took him a second or two to remember he was talking about the drug. He shook his head no. “I’m fine,” he mumbled, hoping they wouldn’t force it on him. 

To his relief, the doctor nodded and packed it up again, then packed his stuff and stood up. “Rest,” he said. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” 

Steve watched him and the two guards leave again, then listened as they made their way down the corridor. With the last steps he could hear, he leaned his back and head against the wall, once again allowing his weary mind to travel back to Hawaii, to Danny, to Charlie and Grace, to happy holidays they should’ve spent together as a family.

He missed them so much it physically hurt, and just a thought of a possibility of not ever seeing the closest thing to family he’d ever known was unbearable. 

They were the reason this unexpected mission felt so much different from his fearless days in the Navy all those years ago. Back then he had nothing to lose, nothing to come home to. This time he knew people out there were waiting for him to show up alive and in one piece. And he’d do anything in his power to stay that way until he figured out a way to get home. He’d dig deep, to the absolute bottom of his strength if necessary. He’d keep fighting until the end. For Danny. For the kids. For the team.

For his ohana.

* * *

If there was any indication of Christmas, it was only the smell of freshly baked cookies and the Christmas tree standing in the living room. He’d made Charlie and Grace to help him decorate and light it up, but the mood in the house was still tense and both of his children refused to participate in any Williams family traditions without their uncle Steve. Danny was already running out of excuses for Steve, but his four-year-old boy wouldn’t stop asking why he didn’t come home if he promised he would. He was too young to understand, and his daughter too smart to be fooled that there was nothing to be worried about. 

Danny heard a car pulling up on the driveway and he was about to go look who was it, hoping for Steve to miraculously show up last minute, when someone banged on the door like Danny was deaf or something. 

When he opened the door, his eyes widened in surprise. The last people he expected to come knocking on his door this late on Christmas Eve were Steve’s former SEAL buddies Joe White and Wade Gutches. “Joe? Gutch?” he asked, his eyes widening in surprise. “I hate to make it sound like you’re not welcome in my house, because you are, but what are you doing here?”

“Hey, Danny. Good to see you again. Can we go in?” Wade asked and Danny stepped aside, letting the unexpected visitors in.

“Are the kids with you?” Joe asked as soon as the door was closed, all pleasantries forgotten.

“Yeah, they’re upstairs. Wanna tell me what this is all about?” he asked, but he feared he knew the answer already. He could only think of one reason Joe White and Wade Gutches would show up here like this. And from the bottom of his heart he hoped he was wrong about it.

“You might wanna call Rachel to pick them up,” Joe said matter-of-factly.

Danny stared at him in disbelief. “Call Rachel?” he huffed a laugh. “I call my ex now to take the kids back after I had barely managed to convince her to let them spend the holiday with me and she’ll make sure this is our last Christmas together.”

“Joe’s right,” Wade chimed in. “That’d be a good idea.”

“A good idea? Did you not hear what I just said?” Danny shook his head. “It’s Christmas Eve and they’re already in bed anyway.”

Joe and Wade kept staring at him without a word, the nervous energy radiating from them.

The serious look on the men’s faces made space for more worry worm its way into his mind. “It’s Steve, isn’t it?” he asked, bile rising in his throat with the thought. Dark thoughts crept into his mind. His brain wouldn’t let go of the awful images of his best friend splayed dead in the dirt as he waited for the stern-looking men to tell him he was wrong. “Please tell me he’s all right.”

The men exchanged a quick look that chilled Danny into his bones, then turned their gazes back to Danny. “I hate to say it, Danny, but I don’t think Steve’s sipping a hot tea by a fireplace with his buddies,” Joe said.

“What happened?” Danny asked, afraid of an answer to his question, his insides trembling with worry. 

“I don’t know for sure. But I got intel his team ran into an ambush when moving to the last known location of an HVT,” Joe explained. “No one had reported back to the base since the attack, so they’re either dead or captured.”

Danny’s heart thudded in his chest like it was about to jump out. Steve couldn’t be dead, could he? 

“I did some digging, asked a couple questions, and I think I have an idea where the survivors were taken,” Wade said. “I’m pretty sure the ones who send them there know their location too, but the op doesn’t officially exist so the boys are on their own.”

“Whoa, slow down,” Danny stopped them. “So Steve’s been captured, is that what you’re saying?”

“We’re saying the survivors had been captured. We don’t know if Steve made it or not,” Joe said. “I don’t know about you, but me and Gutch here are about to find out. We’ve got a plane leaving in two hours. I thought you might want to join us.”

Danny swallowed hard. He knew all too well Steve was like a son to Joe, and if the older man believed there was a chance Steve was alive and in danger, he’d do anything to get his boy back. Just like Danny would. He didn’t hesitate for a split second before nodding, his brain still processing what he’d just heard. All this time he had an unpleasant feeling that something was wrong, and it seemed he’d been right.

“Good. We’re gonna need every help we can get if we want to bring Steve home,” Wade said. 

Danny nodded again, trying to push the fear for his friend aside and focus. “I’ll call Rachel,” he said, already fumbling for the phone in his pocket.

“But Danny,” Joe got Danny’s attention. “We don’t know whether Steve had survived the initial attack. We don’t know whether he’d been captured or not, and even if he had, it’s been four days ago. A lot can happen in such a timeframe. The area is unstable and dangerous and the outcome uncertain. There will be no Navy to back us up and we can get into trouble for doing it on our own anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time. We’re in, but you’ve got a family to think about so if you’re-”

“Stop right there, Joe,” Danny raised his voice, trying his best not to think of Steve being a captive in the hostile area, tortured for days, or even worse. “Steve _is_ my family, all right?” That was enough of an answer for Joe as it seemed. The older man knew Danny loved the super SEAL as his own brother and would move mountains to find him. It wasn’t the first time he was ready to travel across the globe without notice to save Steve’s ass, after all. 

North Korea, Afghanistan… and now this. If Steve was alive, Danny would find him and then kill the damn idiot himself for doing this to him all over again. 

No. Not if. They _would_ find him. And that was what he kept repeating to himself, over and over again, because the other option was just unimaginable.

***to be continued***


	6. Chapter 6

More than a hundred hours. 

That’s how long it’d been since the attack on Steve’s unit, if Joe’s intel was any good. Danny couldn’t help but picture all the horrible things that could happen in such a timeframe. To think about Steve being in the hands of people who wouldn’t hesitate to torture or kill him. He wouldn’t think about the very real possibility Steve was dead. If not during an attack, he could’ve been killed in captivity by now. But Danny refused to believe it for a second.

“Hey, hold that plane!” A familiar female voice shouted out behind him as he was about to board the small military aircraft with Joe and Gutch.

He turned around to see all three of his colleagues, all of them with a backpack on their backs, and squinted at them in both - surprise and disapproval.

“You didn’t plan on leaving us behind, did you?” Chin said with a hint of a smile on his lips. 

“That wouldn’t be very nice,” Kono added.

Danny shook his head. “What do you think you’re doing?” 

“Getting our boy back home is what we’re doing, Danny,” Lou explained the obvious. “And we’re not asking for permission.”

“Who-?”

“I did,” Joe said from somewhere behind him. “I called them. Told them what I’ve told you. The rest is their decision.”

“But-” Danny started, but didn’t have a chance to finish.

“We need them, Danny,” Gutch chimed in. “We’re gonna need everyone who’s willing to help. That place is dangerous and those people aren’t joking around.”

“Exactly!” Danny said. “It’s too dangerous for untrained people to-”

“You mean untrained like you are?” Kono said, crossing her arms on her chest. “It’s not more dangerous for us than it is for you.”

Danny knew she was right. He was a cop, and he was really good at his job, but he wasn’t a soldier, after all. He’d had a chance to watch SEALs in action. Two times, actually. And he could still remember how stunned he was, afraid for them every single second. Those men didn’t hesitate. Didn’t think twice before pulling a trigger if necessary. And he knew the people those men were fighting were nothing like criminals back home. It’d be far more dangerous, but with Steve’s life at stake, he didn’t have a choice. Steve was like his brother and there was nothing in this world that could stop him from doing everything he could to bring him home.

“It’s Steve,” he said. “I have to do this, okay? I have to go there and get him back. You guys don’t have to do this.”

“Steve’s our ohana too,” Chin said, his eyes determined. “We know the risks. But it’s worth it.

“Damn right it is,” Lou confirmed. “We’re either coming back with him or not at all.”

Not happy with his friends willing to put their lives on line, but grateful for such a determination and loyalty, Danny nodded finally. Not like it’d change a thing if he didn’t agree. The team had made a choice already.

“Are you ladies gonna chit-chat or get in?” Joe asked, gesturing toward the plane. “We’ve got work to do.”

Lou and Chin followed Joe and Gutch inside, flashing a sympathetic look at Danny, who stood half-frozen in there, his brain still processing what had happened and what could happen next. A gentle hand on his shoulder brought his mind back from the dark places.

“We’ll find him, Danny,” Kono said, giving him a soothing squeeze. “Now come on. It’ll be a long flight.” She nudged him forward and walked inside with him, side by side. 

Everything began a little hazy as they buckled up and prepared for take-off, the voices and faces fading into a blurry mess as Danny’s brain took him back to Afghanistan, back to Steve’s still and beaten up body being loaded out of that helicopter. He’d never told Steve he’d seen the videotape that was supposed to capture his execution. That he knew Steve was just seconds from being killed by the Taliban, just so they could send a message. That he’d seen the fear in those hazel eyes behind Steve’s strong mask. That he’d heard Steve’s desperate scream when all seemed lost. That it was all he could think about ever since Steve had announced he’d been called up for this mysterious mission. 

He couldn’t get rid of the feeling of responsibility, even though he knew it was stupid and none of this was his fault. But maybe if he listened to his inner voice telling him something was wrong, he could’ve acted sooner and Steve would be at home by now. 

But he couldn’t change that now. All he could do was just hope that Steve was still alive and he’d stay that way, that he’d hang on until they arrived.

* * *

Steve’s eyelids fell heavy. It took a real effort to pull them open. His head was a mess. Every time he closed his eyes his mind went into a relentless spin. The pain was as intense as ever, which only added up to the lack of sleep and nourishment, the dehydration, the blood loss, all of those things.

But at least he wasn’t all alone anymore.

Not long after the doctor had left, Richardson was led down the corridor, past Steve’s cell, and locked up in the one just next to his. They repeated the same process with Lynch later on and even though Steve knew their situation wasn’t good, he felt great relief to know they were still alive and together. He couldn’t see them in their cells, but their presence helped ease some of his tension. 

It turned out both of them had been questioned in the exact same, calm manner as Steve and Richardson’s wound had been treated too. It messed with Steve’s brain because he expected everything but any form of kindness in this kind of environment.

There was no way of telling how much time had passed as Steve kept dozing off, exhaustion setting in despite the best effort to stay alert. When awake, he lay there in pitch-darkness, listening to the noise of the prison and occasional voices of his friends, his mind running through all that had happened since they’d ran into an ambush. 

The sudden glare from the lights being turned on along with the sound of guards’ steps making their way down the corridor startled his weary mind into awareness. They came to stop right in front of Steve’s cell, their faces far from friendly.

He stared at them as one of the men fumbled with the keys and heard a hard metallic click as the thick metal door was unlocked.

“Hey,” Lynch shouted out at them. “Can I have a Coke? Coca-Cola?” he asked mockingly, as if the guards were too stupid to understand.

“Shut up!” one of the guards responded to the taunt. “No talking!”

“How about a cigarette? It’d be nice to have a smoke while I’m enjoying this lovely climate,” Lynch kept talking, no trace of fear in his voice. Whether he was just sick of this treatment and felt the need to rile up the guards, or his intention was to take their attention away from a wounded brother in arms, Steve didn’t know. 

Either way, it didn’t work. Steve was soon hauled up to his feet, biting back a moan as the agony traveled up his legs. The rest was becoming a familiar pattern. His hands were bound behind his back despite his feeble attempt to struggle and a bag on his head obliterated the view of an angry man aiming the AK-47 at his face from a safe distance. 

They shuffled Steve down the halls of the prison and led him to wherever it was they were going. He had a hard time keeping up with them, his legs were throbbing and just staying upright showed up to be a battle. More than once he stumbled and almost fell, which made them all the more aggressive. 

When they sat him down and removed the blindfold, Steve realized he’d been in there before, with the same men circling around him. The interrogation room. 

But something in the expression of Major Haddad staring down at him told him he was done playing games and his patience had run out. 

“I hope you’re feeling more cooperative today,” Haddad said, his voice calm just like the first time. 

Steve glared at him without a word, trying to shake his mind into focus. He had to remain alert for this, no matter how hard it’d get.

“So, let’s cut straight to the case, shall we?” Haddad’s calm tone was unnerving. “Let’s start with your name.”

Steve scoffed at that, anger building up in him. “You know my name,” he barked, annoyed by the same pointless question over and over again.

Haddad’s lips curled into a smile. “You’re right,” he said. “Then why don’t you tell me something I don’t know? A name of your commanding officer for instance.”

Steve didn’t say a word, just continued to glare at him with as much defiance as he could manage.

Just like the first time, he counted thirty seconds before the next question came. “How many of you were in your unit?”

He didn’t reply.

“Where is the rest of your team now?” Haddad asked, his voice unchanged. No emotion. No threat of what might come with the lack of response. 

The question hit a nerve, but Steve did everything he could not to show any reaction. He wished he knew an answer to that one.

“What was your mission about?” 

Steve replied with silence.

More and more questions were fired at him one by one. The seemingly innocent ones quickly changed into tougher ones, like the size of the headquarters, the weapon strength, the manpower of the units, location of a quick reaction force, base security details, operations assets, and more. 

Those set thirty seconds became more and more disturbing with each question. Then, just like the first time, the same questions were repeated again and again. But Steve’s answer remained the same the whole time. Silence, or a quick `I don’t know,` whether it was true or not. 

Nothing about the calmness in Haddad’s voice changed. That’s why a sudden hard punch into his temple coming from the mean-looking guard on Haddad’s right caught him off-guard. His head snapped to the side and went into a relentless spin immediately. He didn’t have a chance to recover before another punch landed on his chin and flooded his mouth with blood. The third one caught him on the ear and the force of it nearly sent him to the floor. 

“It doesn’t have to be this way, you know?” Haddad said, gesturing toward the man who’d hit Steve. “If you just give me the answers to my questions, you may return back to your cell. I’ll have food and water sent over. Get you medical attention. It’s all up to you.”

Steve lifted his heavy head to meet Haddad’s gaze. “I don’t know anything,” he repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, ignoring the loud ringing in his ear. 

Haddad’s expression told Steve that he hadn’t convinced him. Surely Haddad had to know that Steve’s unit wasn’t a regular army. Even though he wasn’t wearing his rank badge, just so he wouldn’t make himself a target in a case like this, surely by now he had to know Steve was in charge. And nothing he said would make Haddad believe he didn’t know anything significant.

“You want me to believe that you’re an insignificant person, I understand it,” Haddad said. “But I have done my homework on you. I know who you are.”

He remained quiet, staring right in front of himself without as much as a flinch. Haddad might have realized that Steve was more valuable alive than dead, and Steve knew that the precious information he had was the only reason he was still alive. Yet he didn’t like the idea of the enemy knowing anything about him.

“Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett,” Haddad began, closely watching for a reaction. Steve gave none. “Born on March 10th, 1977. Five years Naval Intelligence, six years with the Navy SEALs. Currently running your own special taskforce back home in Honolulu, Hawaii. Am I right?”

Steve’s muscles tensed, but his face remained stoic despite the turmoil inside. 

“You must be special if the Navy decided to pull you out of your comfortable life and send you here,” Haddad said. “I’m pretty sure you know more than enough.”

Steve focused on keeping his breath even and his face as stoic as possible. 

“Since you insist on your attitude, I’ll leave you with my men and I’ll talk to your friends meanwhile.” It caused a lot of excitement amongst the men in the room. No doubt they couldn’t wait to get their hands on him. “I want you to think really hard about how you respond to my questions when I come back.” Haddad said something to his men in Arabic, then turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

Steve knew what would happen next. But no matter what they did to him, he wouldn’t say a word. He couldn’t. Not only he’d become expendable if he talked, but more than that, he couldn’t put the lives of other people in danger. He had to do everything to prevent that. 

He just hoped his brain would eventually take him somewhere else, because he didn’t want to be there when the real pain came. And he knew it would. He knew that Haddad and his men had only just started.


	7. Chapter 7

Steve had his head down and his eyes closed. He could hear the words being spoken, and recognized they were in English, but his brain was a few seconds behind in processing them. 

The lack of food and water and the increasing physical and mental abuse were quickly taking their toll. Sounds were more like echoes in his head. His mind no longer felt attached to his body, and he’d stopped struggling a long time ago. He didn’t have the strength. He wasn’t quite sure whether he was awake or asleep. The one thing he was sure about was the pain. It was all too real.

His eyes were swollen, he could barely see anything whenever he opened them, and his tooth was loose in his bleeding mouth. Judging by the pain in his chest, at least one of his ribs was cracked or broken. His legs were exploding in agony, but Haddad’s men didn’t seem to care about his injury. He’d been kicked into them way too many times, and he was sure the gunshot wounds had opened up and began bleeding more than before. 

It was a simple beating at first, but they got more and more depraved as hours flew by. Just when he thought was over, they tied his limbs to the chair and one of the men - a big one with a long scar across his face - unrolled a utility belt on the table, revealing a set of gleaming metal tools. 

Steve’s heart dropped when Scarface, as he named him, unfolded a flap on the belt, took out a thick nail, two inches long, and turned it over in his fingers. With his other hand he pulled out a claw hammer, its head dented from previous use.

“You speak, I do not have to use this,” Scarface said with a heavy accent. 

When Steve didn’t respond, Scarface’s lips curled into an evil grin. There was no doubt the bastard enjoyed this and wished Steve wouldn’t speak just so he got a chance to hurt him.

“This little trick I learned a long time ago,” Scarface said. “It causes maximum pain for minimal damage. No point having your victim bleed out too soon. No fun in that.” 

He chuckled to himself and held the nail up close to Steve’s face. 

“You take a nail like this, and you place it up against the fingertip.”

Steve’s wrists were already bound to the chair, but Scarface pressed his left arm down onto Steve’s right forearm, pinning the arm and hand in place and allowing him to prise a finger open. He placed the tip of the nail at the edge of the finger where the fingernail ended.

“Then you take a hammer, like this, and …” 

Scarface swung the hammer in a short, sharp arc, putting seemingly little effort into it, allowing the weight of the tool to do the work. 

“… just give it a little tap to start.”

The hammer connected with the nail head, forcing the pointed tip into Steve’s finger, between the flesh and the fingernail. Steve couldn’t stop the scream tearing out of his throat. Pain shot through his finger, up his arm.

“Once it’s in, you can give it a bit more welly.” 

Scarface swung the hammer back and forth another two times, using more force now to drive the nail further up into Steve’s finger. There was a sickly ripping noise as the fingernail rose off the flesh, and blood seeped out of all sides.

Steve writhed and coiled in the chair but he couldn’t move. He screamed and spluttered, unable to stop himself.

Scarface stood up, inspecting his handiwork: the nail protruding from Steve’s forefinger and the small pool of blood forming underneath it. 

“Now, will you speak? Or should I continue?”

Steve pursed his lips, trying to take his mind elsewhere. A happier place. But all he could think about was the agony he was now in. And about what more was to come.

Scarface placed his arm back across Steve, pinning him in place, and then positioned another nail.

“It’s only going to get worse for you from here. So you’d better start talking.”

Steve knew that speaking wasn’t an option and stood his ground, hoping he’d at least pass out from pain soon, because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep going. He braced himself as Scarface raised the hammer once again.

* * *

It’s been hours since they arrived at a deserted house, consisting of two rooms and a bathroom, in the middle of nowhere and made it their base. Danny had no idea how the hell Joe and Gutch found this place, but he didn’t ask. If they said it was safe, he believed them. 

He was losing patience, though. He was all ready to do whatever was necessary to get Steve back, but so far they’d been just waiting around for… he didn’t even know what. 

“Can someone remind me why we’re still here?” he asked.

Joe’s gaze shifted to him. “Because we can’t just walk into the town and knock on the doors, asking locals if they haven’t seen a couple of Americans.”

“We need to be sure of the target before we do anything,” Gutch added. “We can’t afford to raid the wrong house. It’d scare them and it wouldn’t help Steve for sure.”

“How do we find the place then?” Danny asked, well aware of the limited options. They had to remain out of sight as much as possible, operate in the shadows, otherwise they’d risk a wrong person would see them and they’d all be killed. 

“I’ve got a local informant working on it now,” Joe said. “He owes me a favor.”

“Oh, that’s great, so we trust the locals now.” Danny couldn’t stop the irritation from seeping into his voice. 

“Hey, I know you want Steve back. We all do. But we have to be patient.” Joe patted Danny on the shoulder, holding his gaze. “You need to be patient.” 

“Sounds like an excuse for doing nothing,” Danny barked, turned on his heel, and walked away to the empty room next door, sensing all the eyes on him.

He closed the door behind him, leaned his back against an old wallpaper, and let out a frustrated sigh. Squeezing his eyes shut, he took in a deep breath, trying to force the images of Steve being tortured or worse out of his head. He couldn’t. 

Sitting around wasn’t how he imagined their trip to this sandy hellhole. Steve was somewhere out there and needed their help right now. And they were hiding here, waiting. 

The door creaked open and Chin’s face peeked through. He glanced over to Danny, as if asking permission to enter, then slid in and closed it behind him. For a few long seconds, neither of them said anything. 

“I know how you feel, brah,” Chin said eventually. “We all feel the same about this. But rushing into something stupid and getting killed won’t help anyone.”

“I know.” Danny ran his fingers across his face, squeezing his eyes shut for a second. “I just… I feel like I’m not doing anything, you know?” he said when he opened his eyes. “Steve needs my help and I’m sitting ducks.”

“That’s not true,” Chin objected. “You dropped everything, including a Christmas day with your kids, and flew across the globe for nearly twenty hours, knowing the dangers of this place. You’re here, Danny. Doing everything you can to bring Steve home. That’s not doing nothing, is it?”

Danny released another sigh. He knew his friends were right, but he couldn’t help the frustration. “It just doesn’t feel like doing enough,” he said. “What if he’s hurt and the clock’s ticking? What if he’s tortured?” He couldn’t bring himself say the last thought out loud, but the fear they were already too late didn’t leave him for a second since they’ve arrived. 

“It’s a super SEAL we’re talking about, Danny,” Chin said with a hint of a nervous smile. “Trust me, if anyone can handle this, it’s Steve. He’ll hang on until we find him and we’ll bring him home safe.”

Before Danny could say anything, there was a loud knock on the front door. Anxiety gripped him when he saw Chin glancing at the door separating them from the others. 

Chin quickly opened the door and made his way back to the team and Danny followed suit. 

“Are we expecting someone?” Kono whispered, her expression freaked out. 

The way Joe rested his hand on the gun in the holster on his belt was enough of an answer. Who the hell was at the door? 

The others were clearly thinking the same thing. 

Three more knocks on the door. Heavy knocks. Purposeful. Danny could feel his heart jerk with each thud. 

Gutch walked over to a window and lifted the edge of the curtain to peek out, while Joe stood by the door with his P45 ready. 

The way Gutch’s shoulders fell down in relief made some of the tension disappear. He nodded at Joe to open up the door, and he did. 

There in the doorway stood two men, their faces tired, lined with dirt. But it wasn’t the faces of the men that drew Danny’s attention. It was a flag on their uniforms. These two were American soldiers. And they looked like they’ve been through hell. 

“Billy Davis,” Joe said in surprise as soon as he let them in and closed the door behind him. 

“Good to see you again, Joe,” the taller man with dirty-blond hair said. “I just wish the circumstances were different.”

Danny was confused, and everybody else looked the same. “You wanna introduce us your friend, Joe?” 

Joe turned around and gestured toward Davis. “This is Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Billy Davis,” Joe said. “One of the best men I’ve ever trained. He was in the same class with Steve.” Joe turned to the other man, who spoke up.

“Special Warfare Operator First Class Adam Martinez, Sir,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Your reputation precedes you.” 

“You were on McGarrett’s team, weren’t you?” Gutch chimed in.

Danny’s heart jumped with Davis’ nod. “That’s right.”

“Where’s the rest of the guys?” Joe asked. 

There was unmistakable sadness in Davis’s voice when he answered. “There were ten of us,” he began. “The bastards got Lewis, Jamison, and Quinn. We got separated from the others. Managed to get off the street and keep our heads low with Martinez here. We searched for them as soon as it was relatively safe, but we only found an empty vehicle. Jackson and Riley lay dead nearby. McGarrett, Richardson, and Lynch were just gone.” 

Danny didn’t even realize he’d been holding his breath until Davis’ sum-up was done. He thought he’d feel relief if Steve’s name was on the list of missing instead of dead, but knowing five men had died in that ambush didn’t allow him to feel any better. 

“Why are you still here?” Joe asked. “You should return to the base and get debriefed.”

Martinez scoffed at that. “No offense, Sir, but our brothers need us,” he said. “As soon as we get back to the base, it’s over. They wouldn’t let us return here, not even for them. And we ain’t leaving anyone behind.”

“I suppose we’re here for the same reason you are.” Davis glanced around the room at their little group. His eyes landed on Joe again. “I know you and Steve are close. There’s no need to explain your presence in this God-forgotten place.” 

“How did you even know we were here?” Lou asked. “We’ve been careful.”

“Not careful enough, it seems,” Davis answered. “Heard people talking about a group of Americans and decided to check it out. And when I saw Joe, I knew our goal is the same as yours. That’s why we’re here. But it’s just a matter of time before someone else finds out where you are, so I suggest we move. Now. I know a good place to get settled at.”

Waiting there for someone to come in and shoot them all wasn’t an option, so they picked up the bags, and after introducing themselves to the new arrivals, they followed them in the veil of darkness. 

Having two of Steve’s buddies in their little rescue team definitely relieved some of Danny’s tension, but didn’t change anything about his fear for his best friend. If anything, what Davis had said just proved that people who had him were dangerous and didn’t hesitate to kill. 

He walked in the dark, his back to the wall, a rifle in his hands, trying his best to focus on the mission. Joe was right. They had to be prepared and he had to be patient if he wanted to help his friend.

_Soon._ He thought. He’ll have Steve back soon.

“Just hang in there, buddy,” he whispered into the night. “I’m coming for you.”

* * *

Unable to move anymore, Steve just sat there, trying to breathe through his clogged and bloody nose, his mind running away to home. To his little strip of beach on his backyard, to Danny ranting over his burnt bacon, to the kids’ laughter. He missed them more than ever before and he had to remind himself they were waiting for him to come home. That they were his reason to keep fighting.

“McGarrett, are you listening to me?”

Steve groaned and tried to lift his head, but then hung it down again. 

“Are you ready to speak yet?”

Steve shook his head. He wouldn’t tell them anything. He couldn’t. 

He wasn’t sure how long it had been since Haddad’s men were last in the room, a few hours maybe, but the pain was still coursing through his entire body. At the tips of eight of his fingers the metal nails remained, dug deep into his flesh. The fingernails had been torn clean off the other two when they tried to hammer in the nail. Surprisingly, when Steve focused on them, those two seemed to be less painful than the others. But the throbbing in his hands was constant, and every few minutes a bout of drowsiness would wash over him as his body battled against the agony.

“I can stop this. Just tell me what I want to know.”

“Go to hell,” Steve garbled, spitting out a mouthful of blood as he did so. 

Haddad released a long sigh. “I must say I’m disappointed,” he said. “I was really hoping you were a smart man. It seems I was wrong.”

Steve forced his head up to give Haddad and his men a defiant glare. To let them know they couldn’t break him.

Their fuzzy faces were floating on his hazy mind when a fist connected to his face. His head filled with pain and confusion, and he was only partially aware of another strike to his head before everything went black.


	8. Chapter 8

The residence they’ve been at wasn’t much different from the first one. But this time the windows had been taped, and some of the old furniture was still left in the rooms. 

The night was quiet, and Danny spent some time talking to Steve’s SEAL buddies, trying to find out as much as possible about what the hell happened, but it turned out they couldn’t tell him much, to his great frustration. 

While waiting for the confirmation from Joe’s informant, they’ve been going through several tactical things with Joe, who took command of their rescue mission. Gutch, Davis, and Martinez fixed them two SUVs, but wouldn’t tell him how.

It wasn’t until after five in the morning that Joe’s phone began to ring. He answered it, and after just a few seconds of talking with someone on the line, he ended the call and turned around to face the team. All eyes in the room were fixed at him in anticipation. “Good news,” he said, smiling. “We know where the boys are.”

“Where?” Danny asked, his heartbeat speeding up.

“My guy confirmed they were taken to the building on the north end of the town believed to be a safe house to the group that is probably responsible for the attack. It’s about eight clicks from our position.”

“How reliable is the intel, Joe?” Davis asked. 

“As good as we can get,” Joe answered. “He talked to one of his friends on the inside. When I described our boys, he said he couldn’t be sure there were any Americans in one of the places they’ve been using to interrogate prisoners. But he confirmed the arrival of three new prisoners the same day you guys had run into an ambush.” He glanced over Davis and Martinez. “Gotta be them.”

Danny tried not to let his excitement get the best of him. Knowing where Steve was and getting him out were two completely different things. 

“So what are we waiting for?” Lou asked. “Let’s go get them.”

“Not so fast, Lou,” Joe said. “The sun will be up in less than an hour. We’ll wait till sundown.”

“Sundown?” Danny wasn’t sure if he heard right. “That’s what… another thirteen, fourteen hours?”

“Danny-” Joe began.

“What if they don’t have that much time? Huh?” Danny snapped. “We need to move now.”

Martinez huffed a laugh. “Trust me, you don’t want to be out there during the day. There’s a good reason why we do things at night.”

Danny’s shoulders sagged in defeat. He knew they were right, he knew that. But still, he couldn’t help but think about what every extra hour in there could mean for his friend. 

Gutch lay his big body down on one of the mats on the floor and yawned. “I got a feeling it’s gonna be a long night. So you guys try and get some shut-eye.”

It was amazing how fast Danny fell asleep. Sleep was the last thing on his mind. He was a nervous wreck. But he found a space on the floor next to Kono, stretched out, and closed his eyes. He woke up a couple of times, had a walk around the house, talked to his friends whenever awake, then lay back down despite the inner turmoil, and let the exhaustion take over. The next thing he knew Joe was shaking him awake.

“It’s time to get ready,” he said as Danny stood and stretched. “Briefing in the kitchen in five.”

Joe gave them a quick briefing, but Danny’s mind was elsewhere. It wasn’t dark outside yet, but it would be soon, and it’d be their go time. His stomach was rumbling, and he wasn’t sure whether it was nerves or hunger, as he hadn’t been able to force any food down his throat since they’ve arrived. 

“All right, listen up. We’ll split into groups. Gutch, Martinez, Kono, and Chin will come from the east. Me, Davis, Danny, and Lou will arrive from the west. We’ll meet up here.” He pointed at the spot on the paper map of the town. “It’s open ground between them and this place, so we gotta see what they are up to, what’s the security like. Once we get there, we’ll decide who goes in. Any questions?”

“I’ve got one,” Davis spoke up and looked at Danny and the rest of Five-0 next to him. “Are you guys sure you are ready for this? I mean… no offense, but this ain’t Hawaii, and babysitting a couple of cops is the last thing we need.”

Danny could feel the anger bubbling inside his veins. There was no way he’d be left out of this one. Not a chance. He might not be a soldier, but his best friend was in there and this wasn’t his first rodeo, after all. “Babysitting?” he snarled at the SEAL. “I-”

“They might not have the same training as you and I, but I’ve seen them in action. They can take care of themselves,” Joe interrupted him, answering Davis’s question. “Any other questions?”

No one said a word this time.

“Good, then go get your weapons ready. Get your minds straight. We leave in forty-five minutes.”

Every single one of those minutes felt like an hour, and against his will, Danny’s mind kept taking him to Afghanistan once again. Back then he was just a bystander, watching a highly-trained group of men kick the door and shoot everything that moved. He’d been barely breathing in anticipation back then, waiting impatiently for the confirmation of success. It was something completely different to stand here, all ready to be a part of it. He hated to admit it, but he was scared. Afraid something would go wrong and he wouldn’t be able to react properly. Scared that he might make a mistake which could end up in Steve’s death. 

There was no going back, though. No time to dwell on it either. Finally, it was time to go and do everything in his power to get his best friend back.

Gutch led Kono, Chin, and Martinez to one of the cars, and they all disappeared from sight in seconds. 

Making sure there was no one around, Danny and the rest of the team left in another vehicle, taking the path on the west. He didn’t like the idea of being separated from others at first, but he had to admit that one car was definitely less suspicious than two, and after what had happened to Steve’s team, they shouldn’t repeat the same pattern. 

After they left the car hidden in the shadows of the buildings, Joe took lead, Danny and Lou followed, and Davis brought up the rear. Despite all the years by Steve’s side, Danny was still amazed by how big men like Joe and Davis could move as quietly as a cat. Danny too tried to make very little noise as he scurried along.   
After a minute of sneaking by the walls, Joe stopped without warning and put up his right hand in a fist. They burrowed up against the side of one of the buildings, and a few seconds later two men with rifles walked by, heading south, away from them. When the men had disappeared into the darkness, they took off again, finally reaching the street where the safe house was located. Joe waited. When he decided it was safe, he waved Danny and others forward, and they cut north toward the meeting place. Before long they reached the end of the residence row and could see a bigger building that was no doubt their target.

The night was almost pitch-black and Danny had to strain to see anything. He was searching for Gutch’s group, but didn’t see them anywhere. He didn’t like it one bit. Anxiously going through all the scenarios that could’ve happened along the way, Danny was already about to say something to Joe, when he heard a whistle. It sounded like a bird call, but not one he’d ever heard before. The same whistle came back from the other side of the building a few seconds later. It was Gutch. They’d made it and Danny exhaled in relief.

They moved to meet in the center. Before long, four shadowy figures appeared. 

“We’ve only seen one guard patrolling in the front so far,” Chin reported, his voice barely audible. “It looks like it’s the only entrance, but if we time it right, we should be able to get inside without being seen.” 

Joe nodded. “Good. Once we’re in, we need to be quick. Overwhelm them before they get a chance to alert the others,” he said. “Secure the targets, take our boys and exfil ASAP.”

Danny’s heart began thudding faster. This was it. He’d have Steve back in a couple of minutes. He’d just have to shoot his way through first. But he was ready.

“All right,” Joe said. “Lou, Kono, you stay here and keep watch. If anything looks suspicious, give us a whistle. That means we hunker down. Another whistle means all clear. Got it?”

“Sure,” Kono confirmed, already assembling her sniper rifle. 

“If anything goes south, and this is meant for all of you guys,” Joe said, giving Danny a quick look, You wait until it’s safe and abort. Are we clear?” 

“Abort,” Danny interrupted. “But Steve-”

Joe put his hand up and stopped him. “Just because we might not get them tonight doesn’t mean we ain’t gonna get them. But we’re going in blind. No overwatch, no QRF, just us. Something goes wrong, the main thing is to get out and live to fight another day. Everybody clear?”

No one raised any objections, but Danny hated the idea of leaving without Steve. He could only hope all would go as planned and there wouldn’t be a need to abort the rescue mission. He couldn’t even imagine how that would antagonize the captors and what it’d mean for Steve and his friends.

“Look, I know we’re all hyped up for this, but let’s remember who’s inside, okay?” Joe added. “Take a second to ID everyone you encounter before you act. Just a usual hostage rescue scenario. I’m pretty sure Five-0 is familiar with that too.”

Danny nodded, trying to ignore the butterflies in his stomach and focus. 

“Yes, Sir,” Martinez said. “Emphasis on search, not destroy, got it.”

Joe waited in case someone wanted to ask a question, but when all he got were determined faces of them all, he said, “All right, then. Go time.”

They watched silently as the guard moved past the building’s entrance. When he was about thirty yards away, they sprinted toward the door. 

The former SEALs were nearly invisible in the darkness. Danny tried to keep an eye on their general location and on the patrolling guard. They made it inside. 

Danny was already sweating heavily. His heart was thundering like a horse on a racetrack. Blood roared in his ears, making it hard to hear anything around him. 

At first, it all seemed quiet. Too quiet for Danny’s liking. They moved along the short corridor and checked the ground floor room by room. There was no one in sight. When moving back to check out the upper floor, though, Danny noticed movement in the shadows.

It all happened too quickly to even make full sense of what was happening. The man dressed in a long robe with a rifle in his hand was dead on the floor before he had a chance to do or say anything. Another one appeared in the doorway on Danny’s right. He leveled the rifle in their direction and shouted something Danny didn’t understand. Danny wasn’t even sure who had first broken the silence of the night with a barrage of automatic fire, or where all the men had suddenly come from. 

They had the advantage of surprise, though, and men who used to do this for life on their side. Soon, five men lay still in a pool of their own blood. All around them the safehouse was coming alive. Guards were shouting, lights were turning on, and the sound of running feet was everywhere. 

Joe kept going, Danny and others followed. They darted from dark space to dark space, shadow to shadow. He could barely keep up but the thought of Steve forced him to try harder. 

The gunfire died out after a while, at least it seemed so. They made their way up the stairs and readied themselves to search the upper floor. A second later two gunshots boomed, and the whizz and crack as the speeding bullets narrowly missed Danny and sank into the wall next to him caused Danny to duck and stumble. Danny fired off a few shots without taking proper aim. The man cried out and his back to the wall, he slid down onto the floor, leaving a bloody trail on the wallpaper. He was still breathing, though, lifting his AK-47 again, when Joe closed the space between them and smashed the butt of a rifle to the man’s head. The weapon slid out of the man’s hands, and Joe kicked it to the other side of the room, not letting go of the aim on his target. 

Joe stayed with him, while Danny followed others, searching the rest of the floor. There was no more gunfire, no running, no shouting. Just them, moving in sync, until they’ve opened up the last door and found… nothing. 

It was empty. 

Danny’s heart sank. This couldn’t be right. He was certain Steve would be here. He had to be here somewhere. 

“They’re not here,” Chin stated the obvious, his voice disappointed. 

“Damn it,” Davis spluttered. 

Gutch gestured them to move with his head. “Come on, we can’t stay here much longer. See if you can find something helpful. But hurry up. I’m sure there are more on the way.”

Reluctantly, swallowing back the worry, Danny followed Gutch back to Joe. He found the older man squatted down by the guy who was bleeding out, but still alive, watching all of them with hatred in his eyes. Joe was holding something in his hand, and Danny would swear he could see the pain etched in Joe’s eyes, albeit for a second, before he regained his composure and put the strong mask back on.

“Joe?” Danny said, sensing there was something wrong. Something else besides Steve not being here. “You all right?”

Joe didn’t answer.

“Joe?”

It took Joe a moment, but he stood up and outstretched his arm to Danny. He turned it palm up, and revealed the object in his hand. “I found it in his pocket,” Joe explained, gesturing to the man on the floor with his head.

Danny stared at it in disbelief for a few seconds before he finally took it to his hand.

He froze. It felt like he couldn’t move at all. For a moment he wondered if his heart had stopped beating. After a few agonizing seconds, he slowly exhaled, his eyes fixed on the two small rectangular pieces attached to a metal chain. He read it, then read it again, and again. There was no doubt of who it belonged to, though. The text printed out on it read:

_McGarrett  
Steven J.  
142-29-1938  
AB POS_


	9. Chapter 9

Steve’s eyes were closed, though he wasn’t sleeping. He’d first woken some ten minutes ago, groggy and disoriented and confused. How long he’d been out of it, he had no idea, though he was surprised at what he’d woken up to. Not a torture chamber or his stinky cell, as he’d expected, but what looked to be a reasonably equipped clinic. Not a proper hospital, it was too informal for that, too quiet too. 

By his right side, a series of wires trailed from his body to the bank of monitors. Off to his left were metal cabinets and a large white closed cupboard. All very purposeful. Clinical. 

His first lucid thought was to wonder what was wrong with his left leg. He tried to move it and then panicked for a second when he didn’t recognize the feel of the limb. He looked down quickly to see for himself why it didn’t feel natural. His foot and ankle were encased in a plaster half cast that sat heavily on a stack of folded blankets to keep it elevated. He stared at the thick wads of cotton that were poking up from the top of the cast. The fresh bandages on his right leg were thicker than before and covered his ankle and calf. A quick look at his hands made him cringe for a moment. The nails weren’t sticking out of his fingers anymore, and the wounds seemed to be cleaned up, but the remaining fingernails were blackened with blood underneath them. His head was in a spin, and nausea crept into his throat once every few seconds. He didn’t feel any pain, though.

The reason Steve now had his eyes closed was that he was no longer alone in the room. A familiar uniformed man was rummaging about next to him. It was the doctor who’d treated Steve’s legs before.

Even with his body and mind being a mess, Steve decided this was his chance of an escape. He was tired of being knocked around and deprived of basic human needs. Tired of living in fear for his men’s lives. His hands were free, he wasn’t locked up in a cell, and no one aimed a gun at his face. It was now or never.

He bided his time. When he’d first awoken he’d been too weak to move. He’d lain there, looking around the room, just trying to acclimatize and to figure out what was going on. Someone must’ve drugged him because he couldn’t feel pain and that just felt wrong after his session with Scarface and other Haddad’s men. That had been his immediate thought and although it felt good to get a little relief from the ever-present agony, he didn’t like the thought one bit.

It didn’t make any sense, though. Why would they make him go through hell, making sure he’d suffer until his body couldn’t take it anymore, and then let him wake up on a soft mattress in a health clinic with the painkillers in his bloodstream and the worst of his wounds freshly bandaged up? The only explanation Steve saw was that Haddad was well aware of winning a jackpot by capturing him, and he intended to keep his prisoner alive until he had no longer any value. Obviously, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t let his men push Steve to his limits.

As he lay there, Steve could hear the calm breaths of the doctor. Could hear the scratching as he scribbled away on his notepad. Could hear the intermittent blips on the monitor with every beat of his heart. Slow and steady. He’d been trained how to relax and to control his heart rate. The doctor had no idea Steve was awake, nor that he was about to spring a devastating attack.

The shuffle of feet. Steve slipped an eyelid open a fraction. Just enough to see faint shadows. And to tell him that, as he thought, the doctor was turning to head for the door. 

Steve sprang up, out of the bed, ignoring the shock of pain that spread through his whole body at his sudden movement despite the drugs. It was only as he put his foot down onto the cold lino floor that Steve realized how weak he was, how uncoordinated and wobbly his limbs were, how much standing up hurt. Too late, he couldn’t pull out now.

He pounced on the doctor, wrapped an arm around his neck, and grabbed hold of the biceps on his opposite arm to pull the hold tight. He placed his other hand behind the doctor’s head. Applied just enough force to let the man know the position he was in. If he wanted to, Steve just needed to squeeze slightly, push the man’s head forward to constrict the carotid artery against his forearm. Within seconds the lack of blood supply to the man’s brain would render him unconscious. Even in his weakened state, Steve was confident he’d achieve that aim.

But he wouldn’t do it straight away, he wanted to give this man the option to talk. 

The doctor writhed, but not too much. He understood the perilous situation he was in.

“Where am I?” Steve said, his voice calm and assured. 

“My clinic,” the doctor choked. 

“Why?”

“Your legs were bleeding badly when I came to see you. You needed immediate treatment.”

“Why do you even care?”

“I was ordered to treat any life-threatening injuries,” the doctor confirmed what Steve had thought. “You needed surgery on your left leg. You’d die if I didn’t bring you here.”

Steve’s jaw dropped. “A surgery?” he croaked, glancing down to the cast on his leg for a split second. “Wh-” 

He didn’t have a chance to finish. There was a creak on the other side of the room as the door opened. Steve took a step back, dragging the doctor with him. He swiveled slightly so the doctor’s mass was covering his. A young man, still a teenager, wearing the same uniform as the doctor, came into a room with a rifle in his hands. 

Steve had to do something before the man had a chance to raise his gun. He held the doctor close to his body. “Don’t move!” he snapped, unsure if the young man would understand. “Don’t move or he’s dead.” 

The man paused, his eyes searching the doctor’s, who mumbled something in Arabic. Whatever the doctor said, it prevented the kid from firing his gun. He didn’t let go of it, though, and his eyes never left Steve. 

“Tell him to put the gun down,” Steve ordered, but the doctor ignored him.

“I was trying to help,” the doctor said instead. “You shouldn’t be standing yet. You need to calm down and rest.”

“Tell him to put it down,” Steve repeated, squeezing on the doctor’s neck a little harder.

The doctor didn’t say a word, though, and the boy with a gun didn’t move.

Steve’s legs wobbled. A stabbing pain blared in his left ankle and traveled up all the way up to his limb. He squinted. Tensed. Hoped it’d go away. It didn’t. It only got worse and his right leg exploded with pain just a second later.

The doctor seemed to sense this. Consumed by pain, Steve didn’t fight as the doctor suddenly jerked and pulled himself free. Steve fell to his knees and in a corner of an eye he saw the young man aiming his rifle at him, and the doctor stopping him with a gesture of his hand. The whole room shook and vibrated and bounced. Steve shouted out and squeezed his eyes shut tight.

Seconds later two sets of arms were grabbing Steve, pulling him. He flailed, trying to get them off him, but he was too weak. They propped him up against the bed. Steve kept his eyes tightly shut, but still, his world kept on spinning. When he next opened his lids, the doctor was there in front of him, syringe in his hand. Steve didn’t move, couldn’t, as he came forward and sank the needle into his arm. The cool liquid surged into his blood. The pain and confusion subsided. Steve closed his eyes and was out cold in a second. 

When he next woke, he once again struggled to keep his eyes open at first. His mind was still foggy and the pain, luckily, barely noticeable. This time, though, he quickly recalled where he was. Noticed he wasn’t waking up alone – the doctor was sitting on a metal chair across the room, and there were two armed guards in the room with them.

When he was lucid enough, Steve went to sit up in the bed. Realized his wrists were tied to the metal side bars of the gurney with leather straps. He slumped back down onto the bed, his weary brain doing its best to figure out not just what was happening, but how he could escape. 

One of the things he was taught in SERE was that the first couple of hours after the capture were the most important. That during that time there was the biggest chance of an escape, due to an enemy not being ready and fully organized just yet. That moment was now long gone, but this was as close as he’d gotten to freedom in who-knew-how-long. There had to be something he could do to get out and then he’d find others. Get them all home.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” the doctor said, standing up from his chair. “Major Haddad doesn’t take it lightly if his men are attacked. You’ll never heal if you keep making him angry.”

Steve glared at him with hatred in his eyes. Despite being the only person around who hadn’t hurt him, the doctor was still one of his captors, and his interest in Steve’s wellbeing sounded fake. 

“You’d do better if you told him what he wants to know,” the doctor continued. “You’d be safe then.”

Safe. Interesting choice of a word, given the circumstances. He’d still be a prisoner even if he spoke. Maybe not beaten, tortured, starved, and treated like a rabid animal, but still a prisoner. Still in the mercy of an enemy. But his comrades would be in danger. Lives would be lost. He couldn’t let that happen no matter how miserable he was.

“You’re going back to your cell today,” the doctor announced. “So remember my advice if you want to live.”

Going back? Steve couldn’t help but ask what was lingering on his mind. “How long have I been here?”

“In my clinic? Two days now.”

Steve winced. He’d lost so much time already. And who knew what Haddad had done to Lynch and Richardson while he was gone. He doubted they were treated any better than him. 

“But you still need more rest,” the doctor said. “And to eat something. You must be hungry.” 

Really, eating was the last thing on his mind, but he had to be realistic. He was starving, and he could feel his stomach cramp in utter misery. He hadn’t eaten since he’d been captured and he had no idea how long it’d been. And he wanted out of here. To do that, he had to be as strong as possible. 

The doctor turned and walked away without a word, leaving Steve with the guards. Moments later he returned with a big glass of water and something that looked like figs. One eye on Steve, he tentatively placed it down on the table next to Steve’s bed. He pulled across the chair he’d been sitting on moments earlier, and sat down. Then he took a fig from the plate and pushed it towards Steve’s mouth.

Steve shook his head. “If you untie me, I can eat myself.”

“Not this time,” the doctor said, a cold and stern look on his face. Then he forced the figs into Steve’s mouth, pushing them between his lips until he had to eat them. 

Steve felt helpless and disgusted by the force-feeding. But he needed the sustenance. He barely chewed it before swallowing. Couldn’t taste it at all. He just knew he needed to eat. He opened his mouth again.

The plate was soon empty, and Steve’s full belly bloated and gurgling. It wasn’t much of a real meal, but after days without any food, even that was too much for his upset stomach. The doctor held a glass of water up to Steve’s lips and he slurped away, relieved by a soothing sensation. Some of the cold liquid ran down his chin and onto his chest. Steve saw the amused look on the doctor’s face, as though he took some sort of pleasure from his undignified position.

The doctor left again and Steve lay there, feeling sleepy and woozy, trying to wiggle his wrists free, but to no avail. One of the guards shouted at him for doing so. Something in his eyes told Steve he wasn’t joking, and he felt his strength fading away quickly anyway, so he complied and went limp in defeat. There was no point wasting precious energy for an already lost battle.

He was just biding his time, he reminded himself. Picking his fights. Not giving up. 

Never giving up.

* * *

An initial shock subsided as fast as it came and still holding his best friend’s dog tags, Danny turned his attention to the dying man staring at him with a satisfied smirk. Without thinking, he closed the space between them and yanked the man up by the scruff of his robe. He held the chain up close in the man’s face. 

“Where did you get this?” he snapped. “Huh? Where?”

He could feel all the eyes in the room on him, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was that Steve wasn’t here and his dog tags were. Was he even still alive? What if they had taken it from him to keep some kind of trophy after tossing the corpse into a ditch? Just thought of that chilled him to the bone. Whatever the truth was, he needed answers. And this man had them, he was sure of that.

The man’s only answer, though, was a mouthful of blood spat out to Danny’s feet.

Danny yanked him harder, smashed the back of his head to the wall behind him, rage and fear consuming him inch by inch. “The man who this belongs to,” he tried again. “Where is he?”

Nothing but a quiet, hateful glare.

“Where is he?!” Danny yelled, losing control of his emotions. 

In a corner of his eye, Danny caught Martinez appearing in the doorway. “Hey, we gotta go,” Martinez said. 

“You got something?” Gutch asked.

“We found some phones downstairs, maybe we can find something useful in there, but we need to move.” 

Danny heard the conversation but didn’t move a muscle, his focus solely on the man in front of him. “Was he here?” He waved the chain in front of his face one again. “Was McGarrett here?” 

No answer. The man’s eyelids flickered, and his breaths were becoming more and more labored. He wasn’t about to last very long.

“Speak, you son of a bitch!” Danny yelled, letting the desperation creep into his voice. 

“Danny, we need to go,” Joe said. “It’s not safe to stay here.”

He knew that. He just needed one more minute to get some answers. He ignored both, Joe and Martinez, and repeated his question, “Where is he? Tell me!”

“Danny.” Chin’s voice now. Soft, yet urgent.

He couldn’t go just yet. He was so close, he couldn’t stop now. “Where is he?” he yelled, smashing the man’s back and head against the wall once again. Then he watched as the life faded out of the man’s eyes.

“No, no, no!” He shook the man, but he was just a limp body now. “You don’t get to die yet! Tell me where he is!” 

“Danny, that’s enough,” Joe said, meeting Danny’s gaze. “He won’t tell you anything anymore. Now, let’s get out of here.”

“He knew,” Danny whispered. “The bastard knew, Joe. And Steve… I…”

“Get your shit together, Danny,” Joe interrupted him. “Steve needs you. We’ll find him, but we gotta stay alive for that, all right?”

Reluctantly, Danny nodded, his mind in turmoil. 

“Good, now come on.” Joe led the way back downstairs, still on a high alert. Just when he was about to peak from the front door and check if it was safe to get out, a loud whistle coming from outside echoed through the air.

Danny tensed, knowing it came from Lou and Kono. Something was wrong. 

Gutch lifted a curtain on the window to have a look. “Seems we have a company,” he said, already getting his rifle ready. “Three enemy vehicles. I can see at least ten tangos.”

“All right. It’s gonna get hot here,” Joe said and turned to Danny and Chin. “You two don’t forget you’re not cops out here. It’s you or them, so when you shoot, you aim to kill.” 

At some other time and situation, Danny would probably argue about that, because dead men don’t speak. And he needed the answers, not bodies. But Joe was right. This wasn’t Hawaii, he wasn’t here as a cop, and even if he got these guys alive, he doubted he’d be able to make them speak. 

He barely had time to nod in agreement before the rattle of gunfire filled his ears. The sound of breaking glass followed in a split second, and Danny took cover beside the shattered window. Perched on the wall, he waited for the right moment to peek out and returned the fire.

There was no trace of fear or hesitation on the faces of Joe and Gutch, and he could say the same about Davis and Martinez. They all moved with precision, losing themselves in the loud gunfire. Chin, on the other side, seemed a little overwhelmed, just like Danny. But he managed to keep up with the team. Danny’s thoughts flew to Kono and Lou in the hope they were safe and well hidden from the sight of the enemy. 

Danny was just getting the hang of the chaos, and it seemed they were coming on top of the fight, when everything changed with a freaked out shout coming from Davis. Three single letters were all it took to change the course of their battle. 

“RPG!” Davis yelled.

Danny braced himself, held his breath, half-frozen in time, wondering how the hell did he get himself and his friends into this.

“Get down!” Joe screamed, flinging himself to the ground, pulling Danny with him, just a split second before the huge explosion. 

Danny was expecting the blast, yet the force was still far greater than he’d imagined. He was blown off his feet and dispatched onto the hard floor several yards down the hall. The force of the blast, together with the jarring impact of the fall, was enough to send him to the brink of unconsciousness. Perhaps he had been unconscious for a while, it was hard for him to know for sure. 

As he started to regain his senses, he realized he was on his side, lying on the ground. His bleary gaze fixed upon Joe’s bloodied face less than a yard in front of him. There was a thick line of blood that sneaked down the older man’s forehead. He was breathing, but otherwise unmoving. Danny couldn’t see anyone else through a pile of rubble and a thick cloud of dust, though. 

He groaned as he tried to sit up, and stabbing pain shot down his spine, forcing him back to the floor. His head spun violently, and he blinked several times, hoping it’d pass. It didn’t. No sounds of shooting filled the air now, no shouting, nothing at all, actually. All he could hear was loud ringing echoing in his skull. 

His whole body ached, and it seemed impossible to move. He wanted to call out to others, to ask his friends if they were all right, but couldn’t find his voice either.

Panic filled his dazed mind when he noticed several pairs of sandalled feet walking through the door and rummaging through the rubble. He fought harder, willing his body to move, to do something before it was too late. But the attempt only made him cough up the dust he’d inhaled, his chest aching as he did. 

That didn’t escape their attention, as it seemed, and two pairs of feet changed their direction, heading toward him. They stopped right in front of him, and despite his best effort, Danny couldn’t do much more than lift his head slightly off the floor to look up to mean-looking men with rifles in their hands.

A sudden fear gripped his chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs, as those two reached for him and pulled him up by his arms. And as they began to move, dragging Danny behind them, he knew that he’d not only failed to help his best friend, but most likely he had just made his children half-orphans.

That he’d failed them all.


	10. Chapter 10

Four minutes late.

Kono shuffled nervously on the ground. “It’s taking too long,” she whispered to Lou next to her. “They should’ve been out by now.”

They had chosen a spot in the shadows across the street as their vantage point and waited. All the noise coming from the inside of the safehouse had died out about ten minutes ago and the silence along with the delay worried her.

“I think we have a bigger problem,” Lou replied, gesturing toward the road. 

Three SUVs full of armed men were pulling out right in front of the safehouse. 

“We have to warn the guys.” 

Lou whistled. It was loud, and Kono hoped it wouldn’t be heard by the men in the cars and draw their attention to them. Luckily, it went unnoticed, their focus obviously somewhere else.

The men didn’t lose any time. They jumped out of the cars and unleashed an avalanche of gunfire at the building. When the glass of the window shattered into pieces, Kono saw the movement inside, and soon enough, the gunfire came back at the attackers, providing at least small relief. 

The bullets were flying everywhere and the deafening sound of gunfire and smell of cordite filled the air. She could see the dust and rock shards kicking up all around the building. And just like the situation wasn’t bad enough, three more cars full of armed men rushed down the street and screeched to a stop at the other side of the building.

Lou and Kono opened fire straight at the new arrivals, picking them off one by one as they moved in on the safehouse from the back. Trouble was, there were too many and it didn’t seem to matter how many they killed, there were still a lot of them. 

The fire never slackened for a few seconds. They had sustained, nonstop, that aggressive volley, the one they’ve started as soon as they got out of the vehicles. They had blasted away at the team in the building, as well as the direction where Lou and Kono took cover. 

She readjusted her aim, searching for her next target. And then she saw him. One of the men swapped his rifle for a heavy missile weapon and propelled it on his shoulder, ready to fire. She took aim. Steadied herself. Pulled a trigger.

Half a second too late.

Just as the dead man’s weight hit the ground, a shattering blast boomed through the air. The ground shook and swayed. A shockwave of air smacked into the side of her, almost rolling her over. It nearly knocked Lou off his feet. Dust and grit clouded the air all around her, filling her mouth and eyes. 

She was shaken. Her ears were ringing with a high-pitched whine. Her eyes were blurred from the grit. She lay there, shocked, wiping at her eyes, slowly realizing what had just happened. The attackers began to move in, their rifles high and ready, but no more gunfire came from the inside of what was left of the building.

“No,” she whispered in disbelief. Her heart skipped a beat, and she stared at the cloud of dust with mouth gaping, hoping Chin, Danny, and others would just come out and keep fighting. Wishing she’d hear or see any sign that they were still alive. But the seconds passed in agonizing fashion and there was nothing. 

She glanced up to her colleague. Just like hers, Lou’s eyes were widened in surprise and disbelief. The cloud of dust began to disperse, leaving behind a dirty haze. Still rubbing at her eyes, trying to remove the grit, she turned back to the safehouse. The thick plumes of black smoke towered into the night sky. Shards of wood and glass were hanging from the stricken structure. Some debris was still falling to the ground where a crumpled heap of bricks and what used to be the safe house lay.

“Come on.” Lou’s voice shook her back to reality. His gaze was fixed on the smoking building. “Come on, boys,” he repeated, louder, more desperate this time. 

But no one showed up. No one fired a gun. 

By the time her brain fully processed what had happened, there were none of the hostile men out there. They all disappeared inside the ruin of the safehouse. And just the thought of those men in there with her wounded friends made her sick.

“Lou?” Her voice was shaking. 

“We have to go in there,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

She gave him a nod, and with panic filling her lungs, she stood up and sprinted forward, rifle ready in her hands. But then she saw a movement and Lou must’ve noticed too because they both came to a stop and crouched down to stay hidden out of the enemy’s sight. Two men appeared in the doorway - or what used to be one. Dragging the third one behind them by his arms. The man in the middle seemed barely conscious and didn’t put up much of a fight as his feet were dragged across the dirt by two armed men.

“Is that-?” Lou began, squinting in the darkness.

“Danny,” Kono breathed out, a wave of heat washing over her as dread gripped her even further. “They have Danny.”

Lou was back up on his feet in a second. “The only way they’re gonna get any more of my friends is over my dead body,” he said and gave Kono a quick look. 

The look in his eyes mirrored her own feelings. The determination. The fear. The anger. All of it. And she only had a second before Lou turned around and sprinted off across the street.

Without losing any more time, she dropped back to the ground, never leaving her friends out of the sight. Danny was the priority, though, because those men were about to force him into one of the SUVs. She steadied her breath, slowly raised her sniper rifle, and found one of them in the scope. Her first shot killed the one on the right almost instantly, and she watched him tumble on the ground. 

The second one, understanding now there was an enemy hidden from his sight, shouted out something, let go of Danny, raised his rifle, and scanned the area where Kono was still flat on her belly. She hit him square in the chest, then she fired a second time in case he was still breathing. He fell forward without a sound and joined his buddy on the ground. 

Lou was just on the way to the blonde man lay dazed in the dirt beside two dead bodies, when the other two men emerged from the building and aimed their weapons in Lou’s direction. The shout of their buddy must’ve gotten their attention and draw them out. 

Before they had a chance to do anything, Lou opened fire and Kono readjusted her aim, determined not to let any of their team-mates die out here. She couldn’t let the fear for her friends get in the way. What she could do, though, was press on and hope everyone had survived the blast of an RPG. 

So she glanced through the scope of her weapon and picked another target.

* * *

Once again shoved onto the floor in his tiny cell, Steve threw the guards an angry glare before they locked the door behind him, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He waited until he could no longer hear the guards, then he huddled up in the corner, propping himself up against the walls to help him remain upright. The ache in his chest with every breath suggested a broken rib or two, and even though he just wanted to lay down and enjoy a moment of being left alone, he knew it wouldn’t help to ease the pain in his chest. It wasn’t too bad at the moment, as the pain meds were still working and dulled out the worst of it, but he knew that would change soon.

“Hey, McGarrett?” Richardson’s voice carried over from the cell next door. “You good? You scared us, buddy. Thought it’s just me and Lynch here now.”

Steve sighed in relief at the sound of his voice. At least they were both alive. As long as that was the case, there was still a chance they’d make it back home. “Nah,” he replied. “I’m fine. They need to try harder if they wanna get rid of me.”

“I bet. You’re a hell of a tough nut to crack. But I don’t think they want to kill us.”

“They’d be dumb if they did,” Steve confirmed. “They know who we are. What we know. Even if they won’t get anything out of us, we’re still their ticket to money, and I’m pretty sure they know that.” The truth was, Steve didn’t even want to think about all the possible ways their captors could use them to earn some big cash. But the scenarios were unfolding in front of his eyes anyway. 

Any captured soldier was a security threat to his country. Let alone an ex-SEAL and two still active operators. They could try and get the intel out of them, but it’d never work. They could, however, keep their confinement secret and sell them off to a terrorist group or insurgents in the area, or out of the country, to try and do the same. Or even worse, they could release the information about their capture into US media and demand ransom, in which case they wouldn’t be the only ones in trouble, because this op wasn’t meant to exist and none of them were supposed to be here. If it got out, the consequences could be terrible. He shuddered at the thought.

“Yeah, I know. But we ain’t gonna stick around for that, are we? I’m telling you, I’m gonna sleep in my bed real soon. I’m pretty fed up with the services at this lovely hotel. Especially the room service sucks. You order a cheeseburger and get some weird, tasteless gruel once in a while. They even keep forgetting the cutlery, can you believe it? And don’t even get me started on a bathroom.”

Steve chuckled to himself. It was good to know that despite everything, Richardson still had his spirit and will to fight. Lynch, on the other side, was suspiciously quiet. “Lynch, what about you? You all right?” he called out. 

When there was no answer for a couple of seconds, Richardson spoke once again, “I guess he’s asleep. He got pretty worked up by the guards yesterday after expressing some opinions out loud.”

“That’s bullshit, don’t listen to him.” Lynch’s voice was weak and pain-riddled. It made Steve’s blood boil in his veins. “I’m right as rain. My little sister hits better than those bastards. It’s you who had me worried, McGarrett. You’ve been gone for days. You’ve been enjoying the stay, huh? I bet you showed the fuckers their place.”

“Just had my legs fixed, that’s all,” he lied, unconsciously glancing down at the ravaged fingers on his hands and dried blood on his skin and dirty clothes. There was no doubt they wouldn’t buy it, but to his relief, they didn’t call his bluff. 

They talked for a while longer, but neither of them said a word about the interrogation nor beating and torture. Yet Steve just knew Lynch and Richardson didn’t escape the same treatment he had received. Neither of the men complained, though. Not that Steve expected them to. Both of them were still young, and trained to handle these things just like he was.

The chatter had died out after a while, and the cells succumbed to silence. It didn’t take long after that for Steve’s exhaustion to take place and pull him away from reality. 

He must’ve slept for hours because when he woke up, any traces of pain medication were gone. He was startled fully awake to the terrible pain. His whole body ached, head to toe, but the worst were his limbs. Every small movement of his fingers was a new level of pain and both legs throbbed with sharp stabbing jabs and it made him involuntarily groan in agony. He sat there for only a few moments hurting, wondering how he would get them all out of this hellhole, when two guards entered the corridor and made their way to the cell next to his, completely ignoring him. 

A key clicked in the lock and he could hear the metal door open. He shuffled closer to the bars to get a better look at what was happening, even though he feared he knew already. His fears were confirmed just seconds later, when Richardson’s sleepy voice echoed from there.

“What the… let go of me, motherfuckers!” 

It was followed by a muffled grunt and sounds of struggles along with guards’ angry shouts. And soon enough, Steve could see them out in the corridor with his bound and blindfolded friend in the middle. He watched in horror as Richardson, as weak as he was, kept fighting them with all he had, to no avail. 

“Hey! Leave him alone!” Steve shouted, but no one seemed to pay attention. “You hear me? Leave him. You can take me instead.” 

But they either didn’t understand or didn’t care. Probably both. 

“Rick!” Lynch called out and the desperation in his voice just about broke Steve’s heart. “No.”

Steve had known these men for no longer than a couple of weeks, but even a blind person would see the two were the best buddies. Probably had been for a long time. And Steve couldn’t imagine how painful it must’ve been for Lynch to watch helplessly as his best friend was dragged away like this by the enemy, knowing all too well he was probably about to be tortured for the information he either didn’t have or couldn’t give. 

He sat there, watching as one of his men was taken out and led away to be questioned. Knowing he wouldn’t speak brought Steve little relief, because he got a first-hand experience of what would happen if he stood his ground and didn’t spill the beans. He didn’t wish that on anyone, let alone the men under his command.

The door closed behind them and Steve glared at the empty hall, guilt eating up on him. It was his fault they were in this situation, and there was nothing he could do to help either of his men. 

Lynch remained quiet, but Steve imagined him pacing the tiny cell like a caged tiger, trying to figure out how to get out and help Richardson. 

“He’ll be all right,” Steve said after a few minutes of tense silence. “We’ll all be all right. I promise.” It was yet another promise he wasn’t sure he could keep, but he was determined to do anything it took to keep it. Anything to get the rest of his team home to their families. 

He thought Lynch wouldn’t say anything, but after a few seconds, his voice came, determination and anger radiating from every word he’d said. “If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission.”

A warm feeling spread through Steve’s chest with the words of the SEAL ethos he’d once learned, held dear, and never forgotten. “Never out of the fight,” he finished. 

“Never out of the fight,” Lynch repeated. “Those fuckers will be sorry for messing up with the wrong guys.”

Steve couldn’t agree more.

* * *

It took Danny’s dazed mind a few long moments before he figured out why those men had let go of him so suddenly and let him crumple to the ground. It was when Lou reached him, his face serious and lips moving fast, he realized he was free thanks to Kono and Lou. The ringing in his ears began to subside and some of the sounds faded back into his world. 

Gunfire. Shouting. Lou’s voice.

It all seemed like a distant dream. But when Lou dragged him a few feet behind the car, helped him sit up and rest his back against the metal, he caught a glance of the ruined building, and that shook him back into reality. 

The RPG. Joe unconscious. No one else in sight. 

He was about to sand up, but pain racked his whole body and forced him back on the ground. 

“You stay down,” Lou shouted, gently pushing him out of the trajectory of the bullets with his hand. Then the older man peeked from behind their cover and returned fire at someone Danny couldn’t see. 

“Lou,” he croaked. “They need help inside.”

“I know,” Lou said and fired his weapon again.

There were bullets flying everywhere, pinging and zinging into the ground all around him, ricochetting off the rocks in the dirt, slamming into the metals of the car. 

But Danny realized the shouts he could hear weren’t in English, and sounded a little panicked. He managed to steal a quick glance at the building and what he saw relieved at least some of the tension. Lou wasn’t the only one fighting those men. There was a sound of a fight inside as well, which could only mean the survivors. How many, he didn’t have a clue. 

He couldn’t just sit around and wait, though. He had to do something. He didn’t have his rifle, but a dead man’s AK-47 lay just a few yards away. If he was fast enough, he could make it there before getting shot. 

But just when he bit back the pain and began to get on his feet, the gunfire had finally ceased. 

Lou stepped to the side and reached for the rifle on the ground, then passed it to Danny. “Kono got eyes on you. Stay here, I’m going in,” he said and rushed off.

There was no way Danny would stay behind, though. He scrambled up to his feet, groaning in pain that flared in his limbs and back. And step by step, he shuffled inside, the rifle up in case there was still someone left. 

The first person he could see in the cloud of dust was Gutch. His entire face was black with dust. The man had a few scratches here and there, but didn’t seem to be seriously injured. Chin appeared behind him just a second later, out of breath, clutching onto his bicep with blood seeping through the sleeve of his t-shirt. 

“You got hit?” Danny asked, his eyes widening.

“No. I’ll be fine,” his colleague assured him. “It’s just a scratch.” 

Martinez showed up in Danny’s field of vision just a second later. A deep, bloody line dragged across his cheek. “Everybody all right?” he asked, looking around. 

“I could use some help over here,” Joe’s voice came from the back of the room.

Danny rushed toward him and his jaw dropped when he took in the picture. Joe, half of his face covered in blood from the gash on his forehead, was kneeling on the floor, bending over Davis, who lay in a small puddle of his own blood. Davis’s face was ashen and his breathing seemed off. Joe had a piece of cloth pressed against Davis’ chest, right under his right collarbone. 

All the color drained from Martinez’s face as he dropped to his knees next to his bleeding friend and joined Joe’s attempts to stop the bleeding from the gunshot wound. He was ushering comforting words to the barely conscious man, promising him he’d be all right. Seeing them like that had sent chills down Danny’s spine. It brought back too many unwanted memories. 

“We need to move before the reinforcements show up,” Gutch said as soon as Joe and Martinez wrapped up Davis’ wound. 

Martinez and Joe reached Davis together, hoisted him up, and followed Gutch outside, with Danny, Lou, and Chin trailing right behind them.

“So glad to see you, guys,” Kono said as she joined them outside. She squinted at them in the darkness, a confused look on her face. “What about the boys? Where are they?”

Danny’s chest tightened. He wished he knew the answer. “Not here.” It was all he managed to say as he moved as quickly as his aching body allowed him. 

As they made their way through the dark streets, Danny’s mind went to his best friend. To his dog tags in that man’s pocket. To the fact he had no idea where or in what condition Steve was. But one thing he was sure of. He wasn’t leaving this hellhole until he had his friend back.


	11. Chapter 11

Steve sat there in his cell, his back to the wall, for much of what he thought might have been a day or so, dozing in and out of sleep. He wished for something to occupy his mind, other than its wild bounces from worry and uncertainty to longing thoughts of home and people waiting for him back there.

It seemed like forever before the door in the corridor finally opened again, making Steve fully alert. He’d expected Richardson to be brought back, but only a guard had shown up. The one he’d never seen before. His heart sank in disappointment and fear for his friend. 

The guard was alone, and he wasn’t equipped with a gun like most of his colleagues. Instead, he held a rusty metal tray with two plastic bottles of water and two small bowls on it. Without making any eye-contact, he put one of each in front of Steve’s cell, just enough for him to reach it, and walked away to do the same for Lynch. After that, he was gone as fast as he’d arrived. 

Biting back the pain, Steve shuffled forward and grabbed the bottle greedily. His tongue felt like it was glued to his mouth and his head was about to explode. The small bottle would hardly help with dehydration, but any drop counted. He downed half of it in a second, grateful for the unexpected luxury, and left something for later, afraid he wouldn’t get another one anytime soon. It wasn’t nearly enough to quench his thirst and moisturize his chapped lips. It was barely enough to keep his weakened body functioning. 

The food in the bowl consisted of a horrible-looking, tan-colored gruel, and it didn’t even look edible. But there was no telling when, if at all, he’d get something to eat again. And if he wanted to survive, he had no choice but to eat as much as he could handle. He forced the tasteless mass down his throat and carefully leaned against the wall again, hoping Richardson would come back in one piece. There was no doubt he would be hurt, but Steve still hoped it wouldn’t be too bad.

Lynch hadn’t talked much since his friend was taken away, and Steve didn’t expect him to speak now either. But a faint voice carried over to him.

“He had a phone,” Lynch said. “The guard. Have you seen it?”

Steve drew his brows in confusion. “No.” Was it possible his brain was enough of a mess not to notice such an important thing? Or was it Lynch’s mind making him see what wasn’t real? “You sure?”

“Positive,” Lynch replied. “Left pocket.” 

If Lynch was right, and Steve hoped it was the case, it’d mean they could figure out a way to get to it somehow and call help. He knew the Navy wouldn’t risk sending more people out here to look for them. More than the lives of the operators would be at stake. It would mean admitting they were here. But Commander Mike Turner, Steve’s commanding officer for this op, was a smart man. A good man whose main goal was to always get everyone home safe. So maybe… maybe if they could figure out their location and get a hold of the phone, let the operational centre know they were alive, Turner would figure something out without adding any fuel to the fire. It was a lot of maybes and ifs, but right now that was their best bet.

They both agreed on taking the first chance they had at it, and continued waiting for whatever came next in silence.

It was hours later when the door opened again. This time, though, Steve’s heart skipped a beat when the new arrivals came into view. Or who they were dragging across the floor, to be more specific.

The barely-noticeable rising and falling of Richardson’s chest was the only sign he was still breathing as two guards dragged his unconscious form back to the cell. His face was swollen and bloody, his wrists raw from fighting the restraints, and his naked torso covered in cuts and bruises. 

Rage filled every inch of Steve’s body and all he wanted at that moment was to make them all pay. The guards let Richardson’s body drop onto the ground with a thud, and with angry snarls on their faces, they locked his cell and left.

Lynch’s calls to Richardson were breaking Steve’s heart. There was nothing either of them could do for his hurt friend. The hated feeling of utter helplessness was eating up on Steve, and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it. He knew that sooner or later they’d come back for one of them again and nothing he’d do or say could stop them. Nothing he could do would protect his men from the brutality of their captors.

As he sat there, unable to fall asleep again despite the exhaustion, waiting for Richardson to come back to senses, Steve once again wondered whether others were still alive and if so, where they were. Whether they were doing better than the three of them. He knew for sure at least two of his men didn’t make it through the ambush, he’d seen their lifeless bodies as proof of that. Which brought another question - what happened to them? The questions about their teammates certainly bothered his fellow prisoners too, but none of them had mentioned their fear and doubts so far.

The thoughts of home bothered him no less than the thoughts of his fellow prisoners and fallen comrades, though. He thought about Grace and Charlie. About the team back home. About Danny. About the promise he’d made when he’d last spoken to his best friend. A promise he’d broken.

He had no idea what day it was, or how long he’d been here, but he thought it was well after Christmas. If Danny knew what had happened, he would certainly kick his butt for ending up here, hurt and imprisoned, instead of enjoying the holiday cheers surrounded by people who loved him. 

Steve thought about the pressure Danny must be under, all the worry and pain he must be feeling, not knowing why his friend hadn’t shown up yet, with no way of contacting him. He wished he could call him, even if just for a few seconds. Tell him not to worry. 

He started to allow himself to imagine what it would be like to go home. How it would feel to see his ohana again. How life would be when he got back. And his heart was aching for all that seemed to be nothing more than a wishful dream at the moment.

After a few minutes of daydreaming, a loud, pain-filled groan echoed the silent cells, notifying Steve of Richardson waking up. “Hey, buddy, you good?” he asked. 

“Never been better,” Richardson’s voice came back. “Missed me?”

It felt good to hear his voice again. 

“Thank God, Rick,” Lynch said. “Can you stop scaring the shit out of me finally?” 

“No can do, pal. You’d be bored.”

“Idiot.”

Steve listened to worry masked by a friendly banter for a little longer, but it just made him miss Danny all the more. He was about to finish his water, when he realized Richardson wasn’t given any. He slid the bottle through the bars to the right, hoping he got the distance right. “Here. Have a drink,” he said. “You need it more than I do.”

There was a hesitant silence for a moment, then Richardson uttered, “Thanks, buddy.”

When a guard came in again, he looked rested and refreshed, so Steve assumed it was morning. Or maybe not. It was hard to keep track of time without any daylight. 

The next day set the pattern for most of the days in the prison. One of the guards would bring water and food, the same watery gruel Steve had trouble to eat no matter how hungry he was. Then the doctor accompanied by another two guards would come to check on Steve’s legs and Richardson’s arm, ensuring them both that the gunshot wounds were healing well.

Steve didn’t believe him, though. Despite being able to shuffle along, his legs still screamed in agony every time he put weight on them. The wounds on his left leg seemed to be closing, but there was something seriously wrong inside because the pain wasn’t going away. Steve suspected a broken bone, which would explain the half cast on it, but the doctor wouldn’t tell him anything. 

The wounds in his right leg were still open and festering. They didn’t look like raw meat anymore, but they didn’t look healthy either. The open sores weren’t closing and his foot wasn’t functioning the way it should. He felt sharp piercing pain with every step, and Steve knew that the clean bandages the doctor had applied weren’t going to a thing to fix that problem. 

Standing up required a lot of energy he didn’t have, and it hurt like hell, so he didn’t get up on his feet unless he absolutely had to. He hated looking up at the guards from the floor whenever they would come in, but his pride had to go aside. It just wasn’t worth the effort.

All day long that day, Steve worried that at any moment one of them would be further interrogated. Or that there would be consequences of his attempted escape from the doctor’s clinic. But so far nothing had happened. He was on constant alert for sounds in the hallway that would indicate they were coming, though. By the end of that day, Steve was utterly exhausted, both from fighting the constant pain and from wrestling with worry about what would happen next.

At this point, he haven’t had a shower for ages, and the mess on his skin didn’t add up to his overall comfort. His clothes were ragged and covered in dried blood, sand, and dirt. The smell of blood, sweat, and piss hung in the air and it was nearly impossible to ignore it. The bucket he was provided was another source of humiliation for him, but there was no way they would let him out of the cell and allow him the luxury of a toilet, so he didn’t have a choice but use it when necessary. The cell was filthy just like he was, and he feared his wounds would become infected at some point. The last thing he needed right now was to become even weaker and more vulnerable. 

One thing he was grateful for was the fact he was able to hear the other two men and talk to them. To ask if they were okay every now and then. Often a guard would come in and tell them to shut up, but just like Steve, both of his friends took every opportunity to push the limits, to see how far they could take things. They were prisoners but they weren’t ever going to be passive about it. They wanted to make the guards understood there was still a fight left in them despite their circumstances. 

The hours dragged on. With the complete lack of things to do, Steve just couldn’t turn his brain off to get rest. He found himself playing back the ambush in his head over and over again, wondering when did it go so wrong. He couldn’t understand how did they know about them coming in the first place.

Maybe they had been given the wrong intel. Maybe intentionally. If that was the case, maybe there was someone on the inside responsible for this, and more people would be in danger if they didn’t find the rat. It was all a speculation, but Steve had plenty of time on his hands and plenty of theories to roll around in his head. 

As the hours wore on, he would listen to the men as they kept up their banter back and forth, and he would join them sometimes. 

“Hey, Lynch,” Richardson said. “What are you doing?” 

“I’m getting ready to go out on a date,” Lynch replied.

“A date? I thought you were married.”

“Yeah, a date. With my wife. I’m taking her to the best restaurant in town and then we’ll walk down the beach. What about you?”

“I’m building a house. Brick by brick.”

They were exercising their imaginations, using their time to construct images of what they would do if they weren’t here. 

“McGarrett?” Lynch said. “You doing something useful?”

Steve allowed his lips to curl into a tiny smile with the image of himself and Danny enjoying a cold bottle of Longboard on his small strip of beach. “Just having a drink with a friend, watching a sunset over the ocean.”

“Sounds good to me.”

When the chatter died out, Steve leaned on the cold wall, listening to the prison going to sleep. He knew he would have a restless sleep missing home, worrying about his team, wondering if they’d be interrogated again, praying for a chance to escape. Despite the worry, he managed to get a few hours of sleep. 

The next morning, or what Steve thought might be morning, the routine began again. The guard brought them food and water. The doctor came. He talked to the guys and tried to figure out how to get them home. 

Then another day came, and it went the same way again. And again and again, until one morning it wasn’t the guard with a tray of food and water who had shown up. 

The dark eyes staring at Steve through the bars glimmered with excitement as Scarface’s gaze met his. And Steve didn’t need to hear the key in the lock of his door to know it was his turn again. 

He sucked in a breath, remembering the ethos he’d been holding dear for his entire adult life. The one Joe had engraved in his brain.

_If knocked down, I’ll stand back up. Every time._

So he did. 

He used the wall for support and clenched his teeth to prevent a groan as agony ripped through his legs, and scrambled up to his feet. Threw a hateful glare at one of his captors. No matter how weak he was, no matter how tired he was, no matter in how much pain. Steve stood up because he wasn’t going to show this man that he was afraid.


	12. Chapter 12

Just like before, Haddad was in the room, asking the questions which gradually grew more dangerous. When asking nicely didn’t work, Haddad left with a sigh, probably hoping some more time with Scarface and his younger colleague would change his mind. 

It didn’t.

But after what felt like forever, Steve could feel himself drift. He was beginning to lose his mind and he wasn’t sure what was real and what was a dream. He’d lost track of how many times they had driven them to the unconsciousness and woke him up with a bucket of water again. 

He was lying on the floor, the cold concrete beneath him. His eyes were shut, but he wasn’t sleeping, just trying to ride out the pain, hoping they were done for the time being. That they’d leave him alone finally.

“Tell me what I want to know and I’ll stop this,” Haddad’s voice came and Steve wondered when had he come back to the room. 

He fluttered his eyes open and shook his head slightly. It sent a spike of pain down his spine. “There’s nothing to tell. I don’t have the answers you’re looking for.” It was true, partially. Some questions he could answer, some not. But even if Steve knew it all, he wouldn’t tell him.

“You’re not an insignificant man. A man with your rank and experience has to know something. You can’t fool me.” 

Someone crouched down next to him, but he didn’t care at first. It was a new voice that got Steve’s attention. The man spoke to him in nearly perfect English. “I’ve heard you’re giving my men some hard time, Commander. Testing their patience. But I’m not like Major Haddad, you know? I am not a very patient man. But I guess you already know that by my reputation.”

The man’s hand grabbed Steve’s chin firmly and tilted his head to make him look at him. Steve swallowed hard when the new face came into focus. The recognition must’ve been written all over his eyes.

“Good, you know who I am,” he said.

Steve did. More than that. The man crouching over him was their HVT. The head of the snake they’ve been hunting for weeks. The very man who Steve’s team was after that night they had run into the ambush. Kaseem al-Asmar. 

“Don’t look so confused,” al-Asmar said, holding Steve’s gaze. “You wanted me, didn’t you? So here I am. Unfortunately for you, our roles are quite the opposite from what you’ve intended.”

Steve could feel his heart beating faster, thudding against his hurting ribcage like it was about to jump out. He knew what this man was capable of, and if he decided to lay hands on him, he was better off dead.

“I won’t stay for long, don’t worry. I have more important things to do. A business won’t wait. But I wanted to see the face of a man who had been following me like a dog for this whole time." Al-Asmar scoffed, as though entertained. “You’d be surprised how many times you got close to catching me. But it’s hard to do when I know your every step before you even take it, isn’t it?”

Steve’s brain whirred. Did that mean what he’d feared? Was someone from the inside al-Asmar’s informant? Why the hell would anybody do that? And more importantly, who? Or was it a trick to play with Steve’s mind?

“But that’s not why I’m here now.” Al-Asmar’s dark eyes glimmered with contentment. “I came to check my prisoners are taken care of. And I was very displeased to hear that you don’t want to talk to my men. So I’ll give you a chance to talk to me before I go.” He let go of Steve’s chin and let his head slump back to the floor. “It’s simple. I’ll ask a question, you answer it. And maybe I’ll tell Major Haddad to allow you to live long enough to see the daylight again.”

It was bullshit and Steve knew it. They’d never let him free even if he spilled the beans, which he’d never do anyway. But he knew his situation would become even worse now with al-Asmar in the room, if that was even possible. He didn’t say anything, just kept drawing in ragged breaths through his clogged nose, bracing himself for whatever was about to come.

Al-Asmar cut straight to the point when no reaction came from Steve. “I suppose you’re quiet because you don’t know where to start. So how about you tell me more about American technologies? The drones. Surveillance. All of it.”

Steve took a deep breath, as much as his hurt ribs allowed. “I don’t know anything about that,” he croaked, surprised at how weak his voice sounded. 

“The altitude of the drones. The fuel capacity. The frequency.”

“I don’t know,” Steve repeated, standing his ground. 

“How can we jam the frequencies?”

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“You have to know something.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Steve said. “Even if I told you what I know, it would be nothing useful. I’ve been out for six years. It’s all changed by now anyway.” 

He regretted his answer immediately, realizing just then what he’d implied. He wasn’t active anymore, not for more than this one op, but Lynch and Richardson were. And Steve hoped they wouldn’t pick up on that and use it against them. Not that they had that kind of information anyway. The operators were supposed to kick the door. They had someone else to take care of the technology.

Al-Asmar clicked his tongue. “Wrong answer,” he said. Immediately, Steve saw two pairs of feet walking toward him. He didn’t look up at their faces. He didn’t have the strength. 

One of them bent down, stuffed something in Steve’s mouth. Food? No, he wasn’t that lucky. It was a linen gag. The other man taped it in place. The sack came next, over Steve’s head.

They pulled him up to his feet, oblivious to the agony spreading through his limbs, and dragged him across the room, his feet and ankles scraping across the hard floor. They hauled him up onto the table and secured his ankles and wrists so he was lying flat. 

Suddenly the table tipped at an angle and Steve’s head was pointing downwards. He began to struggle against the restraints. Weak, pathetic attempts. He didn’t know why he bothered, simply an instinctive reaction to what he knew lay ahead. 

Moments later, without a single word spoken, water gushed down onto him, covering his face and soaking the hood, which clung to his nose. 

Steve tried to breathe, but his brain was stopping him. An automatic reflex to stop him from inhaling the water. He writhed and struggled against the ropes, more power in his body now, his brain calculating and responding to the risk that he faced. The ropes cut into his wrists and ankles, which was its own form of torture, especially on his left leg where a bullet hole didn’t have a chance to heal properly. Blood poured down Steve’s legs and arms from the wounds that once again opened up after rubbing away the scabs from his previous visit. 

But no matter how much he struggled, there was no way out.

The water seemed to go on for ages. His lungs were aching for air. He couldn’t hold out much longer. Steve had been subjected to water torture countless times before. The instinct is for his brain to believe he was drowning, even though he wasn’t. And he’d already rationalized that they were trying to break him, not kill him. 

But it was going on too long this time. 

They might not have been trying to kill him, but if they didn’t stop and give him a chance to breathe, Steve was toast. 

After holding out for as long as he could, he took a quick breath – he had to. As he did so there was nothing to stop the water pouring into him, filling his nostrils. His throat. His lungs.

And that was when Steve started to panic. Because he didn’t know whether he could stop it. He had to keep breathing. But with the water still pouring, he was drowning.

His body writhed violently against the restraints, desperately trying to break free. No use. He couldn’t move. 

He gulped, swallowing the water that was pooling in his throat, then inhaled again through his nostrils. More water poured in. Nothing to stop it now. 

Then, when it seemed like Steve was on the brink, the water suddenly stopped.

He immediately took heavy breaths. His nostrils hurt from the force as he tried to replenish his lungs with fresh air. The soaked bag was taken off his face. He opened his eyes, his vision blurry, his eyes darting around frantically, trying to find something to focus on. But all he could see was the glare of the spotlights.

From somewhere out of view, a hand came toward him. The tape was ripped off his face, the gag pulled out of his mouth. 

Steve breathed even harder, spluttering and retching as he tried to clear the water that he imagined was sloshing around inside him. 

After five deep breaths, he opened his mouth to speak. But before he got the chance to say a word, the wet sack was placed back over his face.

And the water began to pour again. Heavier and faster than before. Steve pursed his lips, as tight as he could. He tried to resist, tried not to breathe, but after a while he couldn’t stop it. He opened his mouth and swallowed the water once more, gagging and gasping to try to stop it filling his lungs. 

He didn’t know how much longer he could take it. It went on for even longer than before and he was certain he was dying. He was drowning and he was helpless to stop it.

Steve had been on the receiving end of such torture before. But it had never lasted this long. Surely he was dying? Why wouldn’t they stop? 

He tried to moan. To scream. A signal to let them know it was going too far, that he couldn’t take it anymore. That he was on the brink. But he could do nothing to stop them. His lungs were almost filled right up. No room left for air. He struggled some more. One last attempt to stay alive. He kicked and bucked, his bound and aching body worming up and down on the board.

And, as if in answer to Steve’s desperate, feeble protests, the water finally stopped and the bag was taken away from his face. 

He coughed. He spluttered. Water and vomit came out onto him but he didn’t care. He filled his lungs with air. Big gasps. It felt so good to be alive. He wanted to speak out. To say something. But he didn’t have the strength.

He took in more breaths, his heart pumping so fast it felt like it would explode. He felt the rush of blood in his body. The oxygen diffusing into his brain. He was breathing too fast. Hyperventilating. But he couldn’t stop. He had to breathe to stay alive. Had to be fully stocked before they started the water again. 

He kept on taking heavy breaths. But the water didn’t come, and his frantic breathing was too much, too soon. 

Unable to stop himself from gasping for more and more air, his terrified brain soon left him and he drifted away from that place.

* * *

Danny was sitting on the floor, his mind wrestling with worry and desperation. Somehow, against truly staggering odds, they were all still going, mostly in one piece, except for the shot Davis took. But the rescue mission was one huge failure anyway.

They didn’t have anything but a bunch of phones, which Kono, Lou, and Chin were working on right now, trying to find something useful in there. It would be easier if there was someone who could actually speak Arabic, but the only one of them who spoke the language was barely conscious at the moment.

Joe and Martinez were taking care of Davis and his injury, ignoring their own for the time being. Gutch was constantly on the phone, trying to find out anything he could about the missing SEALs’ whereabouts. 

And Danny had never felt less useless in his life. 

His head felt like it was about to split into halves and his back was sore from the impact of the fall. But it wasn’t nearly as painful as the ache in his heart. It’s been nine days since Steve’s capture, and there was no doubt his captors knew who he was. Which, given Steve’s rank and his past in the teams, couldn’t mean anything good for him in the hands of an enemy. Danny’s only hope was that whoever had Steve and his teammates knew they had hit the jackpot by taking the SEALs, and they’d keep them alive until they found them. But in what condition would Steve and his buddies be by then? Danny could only imagine. 

He picked Steve’s dog tags out of his pocket and stared at the piece of metal for a good few minutes, turning it in his hands as though it’d give him a clue where his friend was and if he was still alive.

Back home he wouldn’t just sit around and wait for others to find something out. But here, in the land he knew nothing about, his detective skills were useless. The fact they had no leads, and he didn’t even know where to start looking for them, was eating him up from the inside, filling him with hopelessness he’d never felt before.

“You good?”

Danny lifted his head to meet Joe’s gaze. The older man’s wound on his forehead still needed stitches, yet here he was, asking him if he was all right. He dropped his eyes back to the metal chain in his hand, fighting the tears burning in the back of his eyes. “No. Not really,” he said.

Joe didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat on the floor beside Danny with a sigh.

“How is Davis?” Danny asked. “Is he gonna make it?” 

“The artery wasn’t hit. But he’d lost a lot of blood by the time we got him here. Martinez hooked him up on IV and we managed to take the bullet out and stop the bleeding, but he’s weak. The time will tell.”

Danny’s heart sank. He hoped Davis would be all right. The body count of this mess was already high enough and the last thing they needed was another life lost. Which brought him back to Steve. He wished he knew whether he was even still alive. 

“I know what’s going on in your head,” Joe said. “And you can’t think that way, you know? Not if you want Steve back. You need to clear your head and focus. To be ready when the time comes.” 

How he was supposed to stop fearing for his brother from another mother, he didn’t know. But he knew Joe was right. He couldn’t let the fear cloud his mind. Not now. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. It’s just… It bothers me that we have nothing. No trail to follow, no idea who actually has him. And all I can do is sit around and wait for some intel to come to us without even leaving this house.”

“I know you’re climbing the walls, but we need solid intel before we can actually do something. I’m gonna make a few calls, ask around.”

Danny just nodded, knowing it meant nothing to do for him. 

“Look, I want him back just as bad as you do.” Joe’s words were followed with silence for a moment, and when Danny turned his head to the side to look at him, the older man’s gaze was fixed in the distance in front of him. “You know, I’ve never got married. Never had kids. Didn’t think I needed that kind of thing in my life,” Joe kept going after a while. “Then this young kid, so angry at the world’s injustice, grieving his mother’s death, wanting nothing more than to go home and be with his family, showed up in my life.”

Danny’s senses sharpened. He’d heard Steve’s stories about the importance of Joe in his life, but never witnessed Joe talking about it. 

“I promised his father I’d protect him, but I knew I couldn’t always be there for him,” Joe continued. “So I did everything in my power to get him ready to handle anything life throws at him. And somewhere along the way I… I realized he was more than my friend’s kid. It felt like he was my son too.”

Patiently waiting for anything Joe had to say, Danny listened in silence. 

Joe’s lips curled into a smile, but the sadness in his eyes betrayed his real emotions. “I can’t even count how many times he’d made me proud. How many times he’d beaten the odds and proved to everyone that he would always come out on top of every situation, no matter how hard it was. That he wouldn’t let anyone and anything beat him. That he’d stand up after each fall.”

Danny nodded, but remained silent. Joe’s flood of emotions was surprising but understandable. Always wearing a strong mask, hiding his true feelings in fear it might be used against him. That’s what his best friend was like, and there was no doubt Joe had his share of guilt in that.

“Steve isn’t that angry teenager who just wanted out the Army and Navy Academy at all costs. Not anymore. He’s a fighter. One of the best I’ve known. And I know that right now, wherever he is, he is working the problem. That’s what I’ve taught him to do.” Joe’s eyes met Danny’s. There was something else than sadness in that look, though. Hope. Determination. Faith. All of it. “So if there is any way to escape, he’ll take it. If not, he’ll hang on until there is one. Or until we get to him.”

“How can you be so sure he’s even still alive, Joe?” Danny asked. “Those dog tags-”

“Don’t mean anything. Trust me. Steve is out there somewhere, doing everything he can to survive. And he needs us. So we’re gonna keep our heads up, go find him and bring him home, Danny. Alive.”

“Yeah, right,” Danny said, thinking about Joe’s words, desperately trying to believe him. “I’m gonna go ask the guys if they found something in those phones. You make those phone calls you’ve talked about.” 

“Leave it to me.”

Danny stood up and walked to the group huddled around the small table in the corner. “You got something useful?” he asked.

“We were just about to go get you, brah,” Chin said, passing him one of the phones. “We managed to find this in one of the emails exchanged between the owner of this phone and someone else. Luckily, it seems like encryption is not their strength. We think the message says something about transferring the prisoners, but it doesn’t say where.”

Danny glanced at the screen and at first, he thought it was just a bunch of text in Arabic, but then he noticed three attachments. He opened the first one and a photo filled up the screen. The man on it looked tired and beaten up, but not defeated by any means. A couple of scratches and bruises on his face were complemented by dark circles under his eyes.”

“Where did you get this?” Martinez’s voice came from behind him.

He turned around to Martinez’s wild stare. “Not me. They did.” He gestured toward the team. “In one of the emails.”

“It’s Lynch,” Martinez said, confirming what Danny had thought. 

Danny opened up the next attachment, and a similar picture showed up. “Let me guess. Richardson?” 

Martinez nodded, his nostrils flaring in anger.

Knowing what he’d probably see in the last attachment, Danny braced himself, not even realizing he’d been holding his breath. And sure enough, Steve’s face, obviously twisted in pain popped up on the screen next. 

“The message had been sent a day after the capture,” Kono said.

Swallowing hard, Danny kept staring at the bruised face of his best friend. The pain was visible in those hazel eyes and he couldn’t help but wonder how bad the pain must’ve been for Steve not to be able to hide it. 

“Maybe we can find a way to trace the messages,” Lou chimed in. 

Yeah, maybe. And maybe not. But Joe’s words penetrated Danny’s skull and rolled over in his head. He’d been right. Steve needed them. And he wasn’t about to let today’s failure stop him from helping his friend. He wouldn’t let him down. He’d find him and bring him home alive and in one piece. No matter what.


	13. Chapter 13

Steve’s head came out of the darkness when he heard the voice. It was like a mist clearing in front of him. He thought he recognized the voice, but wasn’t sure. 

“Come on, McGarrett,” the voice said. It sounded urgent for some reason. “Say something.”

Steve’s head was foggy, and his whole body in agony. He wanted to move, but his limbs felt too heavy and it was like he didn’t know how. 

He looked around. It was dark, but he could make out three walls and the metal bars making up the fourth one. For a few moments, he wasn’t sure why he was in this place. Then it all came back to him. The ambush. The imprisonment. The interrogation. 

He sucked in a deep breath, and a violent cough broke out of his throat, followed by a hot-white agony spreading through his chest. He couldn’t stop a painful groan from escaping his dry, chapped lips.

“Hey, you awake, buddy? You good?” It took Steve a moment to place Richardson’s voice. 

“Yeah,” Steve managed to croak, but his voice was barely audible. “ ‘m fine.”

“Good to hear your voice, man,” Lynch chimed in. 

Too weak and in too much pain to even bother sitting up, Steve remained laying on the floor, his brain fishing for something important. There was something he wanted - no, needed to tell them both. He just couldn’t remember what. It was all foggy and he could remember the pain, the beating, the water. But none of it mattered. It was something more important.

He shut his eyes close, trying to focus. There was Scarface, hurting him with gleaming satisfaction. Then there was Haddad, asking questions Steve couldn’t answer, promising him to end the suffering if he talked. And then there was… “Al-Asmar,” he said, opening his eyes, suddenly remembering the importance of that name.

“What about him?” Richardson asked. 

“He’s here. Or was here. I don’t know.”

“You sure?” There was a doubt in Lynch’s voice. As though he wasn’t sure if Steve had just hit his head enough to see things. 

“I talked to him,” Steve confirmed, certain of it. “Haddad is his guy.”

“Ah, now that explains the hospitality of these guys,” Richardson said. “The fucker got us before we got him.”

“He said,” Steve began, his mind working hard to put the pieces together. “He said he knew about us coming for him. That he knew about our every move before we even took it.”

“You must be kidding me. Someone betrayed us?”

“Looks like it,” Steve confirmed, anger bubbling in his veins with the thought. 

“Son of a bitch!” Richardson bellowed. “I’ll kill the bastard when I find out who had done that.”

Steve opened his mouth to say something, but another coughing fit caught him off guard. This time a small amount of water came out of his mouth, which he knew wasn’t good. The memory of water filling his lungs, of the inability to stop it, was now too vivid on his mind. The cough once again sent a spike of terrible pain through his broken ribcage, making him involuntarily cry out in agony.

“Shit, this has to end,” Richardson said. “There has to be something we can do, right? I’m tired of those bastards knocking us around.” 

Steve was tired too. Exhausted. But no matter how hard he kept looking, he didn’t see any opportunity of an escape. Not without help. “The phone,” he said. “We need to get that phone. That’s our only chance.”

“How the hell you want to do that?” Lynch asked. “So far only one of them was dumb enough to have a phone when around us. And I haven’t seen him for days anyway.”

That was true. But Steve’s only hope was the guard they were talking about would come back soon. And by then, he’d figure something out. Because if he didn’t they were all as good as dead, whether their captors had intended it or not.

* * *

**_2 days later_ **

This wasn’t how Danny had imagined New Year’s Eve. 

It was supposed to be a nice and cheerful day spent with the ones he loved. He would cook dinner according to one of his mom’s recipes, while Steve would try and mess with it, but he wouldn’t let him. Grace and Charlie would spend some time with their uncle meanwhile, goofing around and Danny would watch them all, enjoying the family time. They would then head to Waikiki Beach, which would be the first time for Charlie, and enjoyed a midnight barrage of colorful salutes over the ocean, which would signal the start of the New Year. Maybe even Kono, Chin, Lou, and the rest of the ohana would join them.

Instead, his kids were with Rachel, Steve who-knew-where, alone and most likely suffering, and Danny stuck in the land full of enemies all around, with not many leads to his captured friend.

Both, Joe and Gutch had spent most of the last two days on their phones. To who they were talking, Danny had no idea. But they were certain they would find something out, and he didn’t have a choice but to believe them.

Davis seemed to be recovering well, which was a miracle without a proper hospital. He was lucky Martinez had enough supplies and knew what he was doing. Despite the weakness, he tried to help as much as he could. 

Good thing was, that Davis was able to help with the translation of the messages Five-0 had found in the phones. The bad news was, that so far it hadn’t helped them much. The one thing they knew for sure was that Steve and others were taken to the safehouse at some point after their capture, but they’ve been transferred somewhere else long before their rescue team had arrived. Where to, Danny had no idea.

He was beginning to lose it. He was unable to think about anything else but how Steve was doing, whether he was still alive. Even if Joe was right, even if Steve was alive, it’s been eleven days. Eleven days in the hands of an enemy, not knowing whether he’d ever get out. Danny didn’t want to imagine the despair his friend must’ve been feeling. The uncertainty.

The sleep became elusive with the increasing worries for Steve’s wellbeing. But he was trying to get a few hours of rest when someone shook him back to his senses. He woke up to Joe’s voice saying his name. 

“What? You got something?” Danny asked, trying not to get his hopes up. His heart skipped a beat when Joe nodded.

“I think so,” he said. “Meeting in five. Wake up everybody.”

Danny did as told, trembling with impatience and curiosity, wondering whether Joe had figured out where to find Steve. 

“It’s not much, but my contact gave me a name,” Joe announced when everyone gathered around Davis, who lay on the thin mattress on the floor. “Kaseem al-Asmar.”

Danny didn’t miss the exchange of the looks between Martinez and Davis. A short, almost invisible glance that could be easily missed.

“Now, I don’t know exactly who this guy is yet, but from what my contact was able to find out, he is pretty high in the food chain,” Joe continued. “So my guess is that finding al-Asmar will get us some answers at least. Maybe he’ll even lead us to the boys.”

“Do we know anything about him at all?” Kono asked. “Did your contact say more?”

“She’s working on it. I can ensure you it’s high on her list of priorities and she’ll let me know as soon as she knows something.”

“She?” Chin teased. 

“With all due respect, Sir,” Martinez spoke. “But last time we acted on intel from an unknown person, one of my brothers nearly died for nothing.”

“He’s right, Joe,” Danny agreed. “The least you can do is tell us who this mysterious woman is.”

Now it was Joe’s and Gutch’s turn to exchange a look. Did Gutch know?

“She’s not a stranger,” Joe protested, but none of them seemed convinced. “She’s with the agency. Got access to all kind of information we could use. And she’s risking enough by sharing it with me, so I’d rather not reveal her ID.”

Danny drew his brows, thinking. There was no reason for a CIA agent to risk her career for something like this. Not unless it was important for her too. And if she cared enough to get involved, Danny had a good guess. “It’s Catherine, isn’t it?” he blurted out. 

“Who is Catherine?” Davis asked.

“Long story, brah,” Kono said with a hint of a smile. 

“No,” Joe denied, keeping his face stoic. “But it doesn’t matter. What matter is-”

“It does matter to us, Joe, damn it!” Danny barked out, unable to stop himself from raising the voice. He didn’t mean to, but all the worry and stress along with lack of sleep were really getting to him. 

Joe held Danny’s gaze in silence, his face stoic. 

“Tell them, Joe,” Gutch chimed in. “It’s not like anyone in this room would tell someone anyway.”

“That’s right. We just want them back and get the hell out of here as soon as possible,” Davis said. 

Joe sighed in defeat. “Doris,” he said after a short pause. “Doris McGarrett.”

“What? Steve’s mom?” A surprise in Lou’s widened eyes mirrored Danny’s own. “Since when does she care?”

“Hang on. Mommy McGarrett is a CIA agent? That’s pretty cool,” Martinez said with a surprise obvious in his voice.

Danny bit his tongue to prevent himself from reacting to that. It took all his self-control not to yell it’s anything but cool. To say that it was Steve’s selfish mom who had ruined the childhood of her kids, who had managed to tear their family apart, who seemed to care more about the man who had kidnapped and tortured Steve two times, the man who had brought so much pain into Steve’s life, than her own son. 

“She always had,” Joe defended her, answering Lou’s question, ignoring Martinez’s remark. “In her own way.”

Danny scoffed at that. 

“Look, it’s all we have so far,” Gutch said. “Without Doris’s intel we have nothing but a bunch of photos and vague messages so we have no choice but to trust her, all right?” 

Danny had to admit Gutch was right. They didn’t have many options. 

“So now what? Do we wait for her to find out more about this al-Asmar?” Chin asked.

“That might not be necessary,” Danny said, noticing the confused looks on his friends’ faces. He gestured toward the two SEALs with his hand. “I think these guys could tell us some more.” 

All the eyes in the room landed on Martinez and Davis. 

“Why do you think we know?” Martinez said.

“You forget I’m a detective. I saw this look you two had exchanged and I can see if someone’s lying to me. So spill the beans.”

Davis shook his head. “Look, even if we knew, it’s classified information. We can’t-”

“The hell you can’t!” Danny yelled, unable to hold it inside. He hated the word classified, especially if it was standing between him and Steve. “That man can be our best lead. He might know where three of your teammates, your brothers, are. So please, don’t tell me you’re not willing to tell us who this guy is if it is the only thing that can actually help us find them!” 

A dead silence carried over the room. Danny could feel his hands trembling with anger. This would never work if they were withholding the essential information from each other.

“Danny,” Chin began, sensing the danger.

“No, he’s right,” Gutch said, turning his gaze to the two SEALs. “I know you can’t speak about it. But finding this man might be our only chance at finding them. And we need to know who we are after. You don’t need to share the details. Just what’s relevant for us to get them out. Please.”

Tense silence carried over the room for a while. “Fine,” Davis said eventually. “Al-Asmar calls himself a businessman, but he is the head of a fairly new and yet publicly unknown paramilitary organization. He doesn’t abide by the rules and he’s got some powerful friends in the government helping him cover his crimes.”

“His group doesn’t care about the body count,” Martinez added. “Al-Asmar hates Americans and he’d made it his life mission to wipe out as many of us as he can, in any way possible.”

Danny swallowed hard, listening carefully.

“He had taken prisoners before. Marines, Army, even reporters, and medical staff, he doesn’t care,” Davis kept talking. “Most of them were never seen again. Those who were found eventually… well, I’m pretty sure they wished for a quicker death.”

Danny felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach, the intensity of his fears growing in his veins.

“If Joe is right, if al-Asmar really is involved,” Davis said, his voice trailing. He shook his head and took a moment before continuing. “That man is a monster. God, I don’t even want to imagine what he’d do to the boys if he knows who they are.” 

There was no doubt that whoever had them, knew who they were. It didn’t help to ease Danny’s anxiousness at all. All kinds of terrible images played in front of his eyes, and he struggled to push them out of his mind.

“You were after him, weren’t you?” Kono asked the SEALS. They didn’t answer, but they didn’t have to. The looks in their eyes and their silence were enough of a confirmation. 

“So you know where to find him?” Chin asked. 

Martinez shook his head. “Not anymore. There is no way he’d stay put after that ambush.” 

Joe picked up the phone and walked away, leaving Danny wondering if it was Doris he was calling to. But even if so, it didn’t matter as long as she was able to help them find the bastards who had Steve and others. 

The rest of the day went in silence. Unable to do anything else but wait, Danny prayed Steve would hang on a little longer. Because he couldn’t even imagine losing him. 

Joe’s phone rang again just a couple of minutes before midnight, shaking Danny into full awareness. 

“Thanks, I’ll keep you posted,” Joe ended the phone call after a couple of minutes.

“So?” Danny asked, desperate for good news.

Joe turned around and met Danny’s hopeful eyes. “We have the latest known location of al-Asmar,” he said, barely able to contain the excitement in his voice. He glanced at his watch, then back up at Danny. “We’re leaving in ninety minutes.”


	14. Chapter 14

They’ve left him alone since he’d lost consciousness after the waterboarding. Steve’s guess was it had something to do with at least some recovery before they would drag him to that room again. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean Richardson and Lynch wouldn’t be further interrogated, no matter how hard Steve tried to take the attention off them. There was nothing he could do for his teammates and he wanted to scream in frustration when he watched them being taken away one by one. He could only sit and wait as the minutes and hours ticked by. To worry and pray he’d see them again. Every second crept by until they were brought back in a terrible condition, but alive. For how long that would be the case, Steve didn’t know. Their only chance of surviving this was a speedy escape or rescue and he was well aware of it.

Waiting for a miracle, he tried not to focus on what was happening to his comrades, nor what had happened to others. It was just too painful to think about it. Instead, he directed his focus on physical pain. That he could handle.

His head throbbed, and the sounds other than silent whispers seemed to make it even worse. Every breath was a struggle. His phlegm-filled lungs were desperate for oxygen, but his body didn’t cooperate. A string of harsh cough shook his pale and fragile form every now and then, leaving him weaker than he had thought possible. The breaths he took were not only painful, but too fast and shallow to be considered normal, which only worsened his overall condition. The intensity of the stabbing pain in his legs seemed to increase as well, and Steve couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be able to walk again once he got out.

He was exhausted to the core, and honestly couldn’t remember when he’d felt so weak. The constant battle with pain and lack of nourishment had taken its toll too. On the basic food he was being given, he had limited fuel that was just enough to survive, so he had no choice but to lie there and take it as his body slowly wasted away before him. 

What started as a glossy sheen of sweat, turned into beaded as he lay on the floor. It was cold. Colder than before. Steve would swear that when a violent shiver took control of his broken body and wouldn’t stop. 

His mind was in a daze too, and the border between reality and dreams was becoming more and more blurred each minute of his miserable existence.

It was a click of a key in the lock that forced him to push his aching hands into the floor and lift his torso off the floor. And his heart jumped when he recognized the face of the man walking down the corridor toward his cell.

The guard with a phone.

Steve shook his mind into clarity, willing his body to fight and his mind to work harder. He’d been waiting for this guy for days, hoping he’d show up with their best chance of calling for help. And there it was, in his left pocket, attracting Steve’s attention much more than food and water on the tray in his hands.

With the adrenaline rushing into his body, he held onto the bars as he scrambled up to his bare feet, his wounded legs trembling with effort, stabbing pain erupting in them with his weight on them.

“Hey, you!” Steve called out, still unsure how he’d play this. But he knew he wasn’t about to let their only opportunity pass. “Hey. You understand me?”

The guard looked at him with an angry snarl on his face. “La tatakalam!” he shouted. 

Steve had learned it meant to shut up a long time ago, but he wasn’t about to comply. “I guess not, then,” Steve said, holding the guard’s gaze. “Of course they wouldn’t send you down here with food if you were smart enough to learn the language, would they?”

“I said, shut up!” the guard said with a strong accent, but English nonetheless. “No talking.”

Steve might’ve struck a nerve. But he wasn’t done yet. “I don’t give a shit about what you’ve said,” he kept going. “You’re not in a position to demand anything, are you? They didn’t even give you a gun, let alone give any orders. Do they not trust a dumbass like you? Maybe they’re afraid you’d shoot your foot or something.” 

He was right. The man really wasn’t the smartest one around. He’d proven it by taking two steps closer to the bars, his face turning red with anger. He leaned forward a little bit more to say something to Steve, but he never got the chance. Coming close enough within Steve’s reach with no backup nor a weapon had turned out to be a fatal mistake.

Reaching deep inside for the last remaining strength, Steve sprang into action. He grabbed the guard by the robe and pulled hard, crashing his head into the metal bars. By the time the tray he’d been holding clattered to the floor, Steve had the guard turned around with back to the bars and his right arm snaked tightly around the man’s neck. The effort nearly made him collapse, but the loud cheers of his men in the cells next door made him push himself for a little bit longer. He fought for them. For freedom. He pulled harder, ignoring the man’s growing panic and flailing limbs coming at him as the guard struggled to draw some air into his lungs. Soon enough, the futile attempts became weaker and weaker until they stopped and the guard’s body went limp.

Steve grabbed the phone and let the man’s dead weight crash onto the floor, right between his and Richardson’s cell. His legs gave out just a second later, and Steve slumped onto the floor too, his vision blurred by pain.

“You’ve made it,” Lynch said, not hiding the excitement in his voice. “I can’t believe it.”

Steve didn’t want to lose time and began to dial the number of the operating base. But he could already hear the noise and sound of footsteps from behind the door. The noise had obviously attracted unwanted attention. His heart thudded in his chest like crazy, adrenaline still rushing in his veins. He didn’t have much time.

It only rang twice before Steve could hear a sound of a voice on the other side of the line. “The Naval operations base. Sergeant Miller. What can I do for you?”

“This is Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett,” he spilled as fast as he could. “Me and two of my men had been captured by Kaseem al-Asmar’s men. We’re held at an unknown location and need some help. You need to speak to Commander Mike Turner.”

“Can you repeat?” came the answer.

“Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett,” he tried again, louder and more desperate. “We’ve been captured by-”

“I can’t understand a word, please repeat.”

Steve’s heart sank. After all the trouble it was the bad signal what would make the difference between life and death of his men? No. He wasn’t giving up. He opened his mouth to repeat it once again, but the man on the other side of the line cut him off.

“Hello? Hello? You still there?”

Steve’s desperation was growing up, and the sound of footsteps was now even closer, making it impossible to make the call on time. He tried anyway. “This is Steven McGarrett, do you copy?”

Nothing.

“Do you copy?”

A rustling of the line was the only answer, though, and then it went dead, burying Steve’s hope for the rescue. 

“Don’t tell me it was all for nothing,” Richardson said, just as the door opened and the narrow corridor filled with the guards.

Steve shoved the phone into the pocket of his cargo pants, silently praying they wouldn’t see it. It wasn’t all lost. As long as he had it, he could try again later.

They surrounded the cells with their rifles at the ready, studying the dead man on the floor. Steve wondered what would happen next, but he was sure he wouldn’t like it. A few seconds later, Major Haddad appeared with Kaseem al-Asmar himself. A wave of emotions washed over their faces. In seconds they both went from shock and surprise to anger and rage as their eyes grew to the size of melons. 

“What the hell had happened in here?” Haddad asked through his clenched teeth. 

Steve’s brain was whirring with thoughts, but he didn’t see any reply that wouldn’t end up in more violence, so he kept his mouth shut as he stared at the group of armed men and their boss. Lynch followed suit, but Richardson obviously couldn’t help himself. “Your guy came in and dropped dead,” he said. Steve knew he was just riling Haddad up, but now wasn’t a good time. It was bad enough already.

“I’ve made myself clear when I said what would happen if you cause trouble,” Haddad said after a moment, his usual calm manner creeping back into his voice. 

Al-Asmar held a palm of his hand up to signal Haddad to stop talking, and at that moment Steve knew he decided to take things into his own hands. He looked at the body and then he shifted his gaze between Steve and Richardson, whose cells were the closest to the corpse. “I expect the responsible come forward, otherwise I’ll have to resort to extreme measures,” he said. “You have fifteen seconds to comply.”

Steve could only imagine what extreme measures would mean, but it couldn't be anything good for sure. Not with al-Asmar. He tried his best to think about the response that would help them out in the situation, but couldn’t come up with anything no matter how hard he thought.

The seconds ticked by. Al-Asmar looked at his watch. 

“Very well,” al-Asmar said. He gave an order to his men in Arabic. 

The guards spread and moved toward their cells, unlocking the door swiftly. Two of them barged in and hauled Steve up, ignoring his injured legs, and dragged him out of the cell into the corridor, where they forced him to his knees. He winced as his aching joints crashed onto the hard floor. 

Lynch and Richardson were soon dragged out of their cells too, forced to the same position. Steve realized this was the first time he could see them without the hood on, and their beaten up faces formed the bubbles of rage under his skin. They were a picture of what Steve thought he might see if he looked into a mirror. Weak, broken bodies in filthy and bloodied reminders of the clothes, but there was still fire in their eyes. They all exchanged a quick look, probably wondering what would be the consequences.

“One more chance,” al-Asmar said, looking each of them into the eyes. 

Steve fought the mist clouding his mind, preventing him from coming up with something solid. To no avail.

“No one? All right.” One of the guards holding Lynch down raised the machete and Steve’s heart nearly stopped beating. Steve tried to stand up, but he was quickly shown his place with a painful kick to his hurt legs. Richardson struggled too, desperately trying to help his friend, but was too weak for it to make a difference. Lynch flopped over to his side, trying to get away, but they lifted him back up. He kicked at them, cursing. It took the guards a few moments, but they finally got him back on his knees. 

“Don’t,” Steve pleaded, unable to keep it going for any longer. “Stop!”

But they didn’t listen and Lynch wouldn’t hold still, so one of the guards grabbed his hair, holding his head straight up. Then the other one raised the machete. 

“Stop!” Steve shouted again, as loud as he could. “Stop” I did it! It was me!” 

Al-Asmar stared at him. “You?”

“Me,” Steve said. 

“You, with injured legs, barely standing, unable to walk, killed one of my men?” 

“I did.” Steve noticed the wild stares of his comrades, pleading him to shut up. But he wasn’t going to let any of them suffer for his actions. 

“I don’t believe you.”

Steve shrugged. “I can’t help you if you don’t believe me. But it’s the truth.”

“Why did you do it?” Haddad chimed in. “He brought you food and water and this is what he got for the kindness.”

He couldn’t tell them the real reason. Couldn’t give away their only chance of getting out of here. “I hoped he had the keys from the cells,” he lied. “Wanted out of this place.”

Al-Asmar stared him up and down, studying him. Then he reached behind his back, raised his arm with a handgun in his hand, aimed at Richardson’s head. “Maybe if I kill him, you will tell me the truth.”

For a moment Steve saw Joe’s face in his mind. He was telling him to stay strong. To stand up. Steve owed it to him to try. 

“No, you won’t.”

“What?” Al-Asmar seemed startled. “Why would you think I would not?”

“You may think I’m lying. But you aren’t going to kill anyone. You already made your point about how tough you are. So you’re going to take me instead.”

“Take you?” Al-Asmar looked at him, confused. 

“Yes. You’re going to take me to that room and ‘interrogate’ me. Do whatever it is you need to do. That’s how you’ll set your example. Because you know I won’t tell you anything more. Neither will any of my men.”

Al-Asmar looked puzzled. Why was he being wexed by a lowly American prisoner? The question was practically written across his face. 

“I could kill all of you. No one would care,” he declared.

“I think a lot of people would care,” Steve said. “So go ahead, kill all of us. The US military isn’t going to take kindly to you butchering the American sailors.”

“Your military?” Al-Asmar threw back his head and laughed. “No one knows we have you and it’ll stay that way until I decide to change my mind.”

Steve refused to back up. “Yes, our military. You know they will be looking for us. They won’t stop. So your best option is to take me and do what you have to do to prove you’re in charge.”

Al-Asmar stared at him before shifting his gaze to Richardson and Lynch. “You two look at your commander,” he said. “He’s weak. A coward and a liar. He’ll be taken for interrogation and I assure you we will break him. I suggest you behave if you don’t want to be next. ” 

“It wasn’t him,” Richardson said all of a sudden. “It was me. I killed that man.”

“No, I did it,” Lynch joined him, despite the fact that the distance of the body from his cell hardly made him a believable accomplice. “Take me.”

Steve threw them a pleading look. What the hell were they doing? He was supposed to protect them and he’d do so at all costs. But they were only making his work harder if they were willing to put their lives on the line for him.

Al-Asmar’s face grew red. His eyes were wide and full of anger. He growled an order in Arabic, presumably to take Steve away, pointing at him. 

Two guards hauled him up by the arms and led him towards the door, ignoring the struggles and loud protests of the other two prisoners. As they dragged Steve along, he pretended to be unfazed by the fact he was pretty much a dead man already. Because he knew for sure that he wouldn’t make it through another round of torture. Not in his current state.


	15. Chapter 15

Steve hung inside the interrogation room, his feet barely touching the floor. He was consumed by agony, beaten and bleeding, and he thought about Danny. Through all the torture and abuse, he’d done like Joe had taught him. He dug deep and endured it. Memories of Danny were the most pleasant ones Steve had, so he concentrated on them, because he knew only happy memories would see him through now. 

But what they’ve put him through wasn’t an interrogation as promised. No questions had been asked this time. Not anymore. It was nothing but a punishment for his actions. An example set for Steve’s comrades. Haddad’s men searched him on al-Asmar’s order before they began, and found the phone in his pocket, which didn’t help his situation either. Steve’s heart dropped when his only prospect of freedom fell apart like a house of cards.

They were enthusiastic and inventive in their cruelty toward Steve. At first, it was simple beatings. They used some kind of wooden sticks and hit him in the stomach, the chest, back, sides, neck and shoulders - everywhere except his legs and head, because they wanted him conscious. A couple of times Steve passed out from the pain anyway. When that happened he got buckets of water in the face until he was awake. Then the beatings would start again. 

Scarface volunteered to work Steve over. Pleasure danced in his eyes as he stood back and leered at Steve. He would take a swing, stepping into it with all his weight and force behind it, then stand back and smile at his defenseless victim, his crooked teeth and scar mocking him. 

“Didn’t eat your breakfast this morning, did you? I hardly felt that one,” Steve croaked, refusing to show any sign of weakness. If he was going to die, he would go with his head up.

Scarface would stare at him with narrow eyes as if he didn’t understand. Then he’d wind up and take another whack. 

“Now you’re getting it, buddy. Maybe you need to warm up before you start. Stretch out a little.” Steve’s voice was a mere whisper, but he needed to show the bastard he wasn’t scared. That there would be the fight in him until the very end.

Steve’s backtalk drove Scarface crazy. His hands were bound to a rafter over his head, giving Scarface full access to Steve’s midsection. He stepped into position and swung the stick repeatedly into Steve’s right side. Steve thought he would die, and he tried to bend away from each blow to lessen the impact. But after a while, his strength failed and he couldn’t move. So Scarface just kept hitting him over and over.

Another bucket of water washed over Steve’s head. The water was actually a relief from the pain, but he kept that information to himself. He wondered where the water had come from and if it would make him sick. 

Steve hung from the rafter, wondering what hurt more - bearing his weight on his bound hands, or his shot up legs - while Scarface worked him over until the rope made his wrists raw and his wounded legs could not support his weight.

Scarface threw the bucket in the corner of the room and walked out, muttering to himself.

Steve wasn’t sure how long he hung there. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Eventually, someone jerked him awake. It was another guard who cut his hands loose and let him slump to the ground.

The guard was having none of that and pulled Steve to his feet, ignoring his painful scream that putting all of his weight on his legs had caused. Then the guard dumped a can of rice on the floor and Steve had no idea what was happening. He hit Steve in the back of the legs with his wooden stick and Steve crumpled on his knees with a pained cry.

Landing on the rice kernels hurt more than Steve could possibly imagine. The guard poked at him with his stick until he was kneeling straight up on his knees. He tied Steve’s hands behind his back. Hundreds of rice kernels dug into his skin. He tried to sit back on his haunches to relieve some of the pressure, but the guard blasted him in the lower back with the stick. A few minutes later he collapsed backward again, and the guard hit him much harder this time. Apparently sitting back wasn’t allowed. Kneeling straight up put all of Steve’s weight on his knees. 

Whenever Steve started to waver and sink to his haunches, the guard would spring forward brandishing the big stick. Steve usually rose up before he could hit him again. The time passed and it became increasingly harder to stay in the position. It would be a challenge even without the damn rice. At this point, Steve prayed for passing out, to get at least a momentary relief. But it didn’t come. 

Soon, he couldn’t take it anymore. He tried to shift the weight on his shaking knees but failed and fell forward. He tried to recover, but with the bound hands, wounded legs, and probably a dozen broken or bruised ribs, he couldn’t get himself back into the right position. When he tried to lift himself up, he let out a yelp of pain. 

The guard crossed the small space in a heartbeat and the cane whistled through the air, connecting with the top of Steve’s shoulder. There was no bearing that one and Steve let out another scream. He was sure the guard had broken his shoulder or his collarbone. He faded in and out as the guard jerked him back to his knees, then stepped back to watch him again. 

Steve didn’t know how much longer he could keep going. On top of the pain, he was starving and he would give anything for a few drops of water. But he knew that was a wishful dream. 

Some time later, the guard left the room without a word. As soon as he did, Steve keeled over on his side. His knees screamed in relief. But there was still rice all over the floor, and it dug into every part of him. He tried to move, to roll over, or stand. But he couldn’t. 

He felt himself drifting. Wished for it to be over, one way or another. He could feel he would never leave this room alive. So he waited for the end to come.

He lay in the dark, sending silent apologies to Danny, to Grace and Charlie, to Lou, to Kono and Chin, to Mary and Joan, to Joe and Gutch, to Nahele, to Kamekona and Flippa, to Duke, to everyone else who cared about him. For not making it home this time. Tears burned in the back of his eyes with the thought of his ohana, knowing he’d never see them again, that they’d be left without any evidence of what had happened to him or where his body lay.

There was no way of telling how long he’d lain there like that when a voice spoke to him. He’d swear it was Danny’s, but his friend was nowhere to be seen. No one was.

“What do you think you’re doing, Steven?” Danny said, his voice irritated. 

Steve didn’t know what Danny meant by that. 

“I’ll tell you what. You’re giving up. That’s what you’re doing right now,” Danny said.

“No, I’m not,” Steve protested. 

“You’re not? You’ve just said goodbye to the people you love,” Danny stood his ground. “You lay here, waiting for the final breath. Wishing for it instead of hoping you’d get home to us.”

Danny was right. But Steve didn’t have any more strength. He was done, he knew it. “I’m sorry, Danno. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Oh, he’s sorry,” Danny raised his voice. “What about the promise you’ve made, huh? To come home. What about Grace and Charlie? I don’t want to be the one who tells them their superSEAL uncle won’t make it because he was too tired to fight.”

Steve didn’t want to disappoint them. He loved Danny’s kids like they were his own. But what was he supposed to do? He should have never promised anything, no matter how certain he felt about it. 

“I know you’re hurting, Steve,” Danny said. “I know it seems impossible right now but you need to push harder. To fight for a little longer. Don’t let them break you. You’re a SEAL for God’s sake, act like it!”

It was easier said than done, but Danny was right. Once a SEAL, always a SEAL. And Joe didn’t teach him to give up when things become tough. He taught him to fight until the last breath. Fight for his life. For his country. For his family. “ ‘m not giving up,” he slurred. “I’m not.”

“I need you to do something for me,” Danny said after a moment, the tone of his voice now calmer.

Steve wasn’t sure he could do anything at this point, but he’d do everything he could for Danny. Even now, on a brink of death. “Okay. What is it?”

“Promise me you won’t die.”

Steve shook his head. “I can’t do that, buddy.”

“Yes, you can. Come on, say it. I need you to say it, Steven.”

This time Steve couldn’t stop a single tear from escaping his eye. It rolled down his cheek and he could feel it drop onto the cold floor. “I’m sorry,” he croaked. 

“Say it!” Danny repeated. “Promise me you’ll fight. That you’ll make it through no matter how hard it is. Because we need you, Steve. I need you.”

Steve shut his eyes close, thinking about Danny’s words. All of them. About the desperation in his voice, asking him to keep fighting. About his pleading. And he couldn’t say no to that voice. “I’ll try.”

“No trying. You’ll live, you hear me? You don’t have a choice. Can you listen to me for once in your life? Do not die! I need you to say it, Steve.”

He sucked in a breath, shut his eyes close with the pain. “All right. I promise,” he whispered into the darkness. “I promise I won’t die here, Danno.”

Danny’s voice went quiet after that and Steve lay there in silence, determined not to break this promise. Not again.

He took a deep breath again and felt like someone had shoved a red-hot steel rod down his throat and into his lungs. He cursed a long string of words so foul his mother would have washed his mouth out with soap if she heard him. It was pure agony and there was no doubt his ribs were broken. But he was going to breathe no matter how much it hurt. 

Off and on, he practiced taking deep breaths. He lost consciousness a few times, but whenever he came to, he kept breathing deep until he grew too tired and fell asleep, his head hitting his chest.

The opening door woke him. Scarface walked inside, smiling and holding his length of stick in one hand. He looked well-rested and refreshed. He also carried a length of rope over his shoulder.

“Missed you already,” Steve said, in the most cheerful way he could manage. 

Scarface didn’t say anything and, pulling Steve roughly to his feet, cut the cords binding his hands. Steve rubbed his right wrist, which was raw, but Scarface smacked his hand. Hard.

With his hands in front of him, Scarface bound them once again with the rope and jerked him to the center of the room. He tossed the end of the rope over the rafter. Danny’s voice rolled over in his head once again. 

“Do not die, Steve,” it whispered.

It was then that Steve decided to do something supremely stupid. A move born of desperation rather than anything else. One last attempt to fight, requiring him to dig to the absolute bottom of his almost non-existent strength and willpower. He owed Danny to try.

Scarface turned around to face Steve, and as he was about to pull on the rope that would raise Steve’s hands. Steve kicked him hard in the groin with his knee. Scarface’s eyes widened in surprise, and he sank to his knees. Steve’s knee shot upward like a snake and connected with the point of Scarface’s chin. He groaned and fell over backward. The pain in Steve’s ribs and legs after all that activity made him nearly pass out.

Scarface had leaned his stick against the wall. Big mistake. Steve picked it up with his bound hands and went to work on him. He hit him in the stomach, the legs, and the ribs. But he had no strength behind the blows. 

When he swung the stick again, Scarface caught it and jerked it away from Steve. He swung it hard, connecting with Steve’s knees. Steve went down, landing on his shoulder. The stick rained down on him. Scarface became a steaming ball of rage. He screamed what Steve could only assume were some obscenities at him. His shouting brought the attention of more guards, who came rushing into the room. They joined him, their feet and fists pounding over Steve’s body. Soon, Steve slipped away into the darkness of unconsciousness.

A bucket of water brought him back to reality. He was trussed up, hanging from the rafter. That was all that was keeping him upright. His eyes were nearly swollen shut. But he knew there were men in the room.

A hand grabbed him by the cheeks, and he tried to focus. Finally, he recognized… Wo Fat? What was he doing here? He should be dead. Steve himself had made sure of that. How was that even possible? 

“You,” Steve whispered. That was all he managed in his surprise.

Wo Fat squeezed Steve’s cheeks harder. “You attacked one of my men,” he said. “Again.”

“Did I? Which one?” Steve was confused. He squinted, trying to bring his eyes into focus. For a moment Wo Fat became Kaseem al-Asmar. Then he became Wo Fat again. Was he hallucinating? 

“Do not trifle with me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Steve said sarcastically. “As you can see, your men have done a fair job of attacking me.” He squinted again and grew more confused. His head was swirling with changing images. Wo Fat and al-Asmar seemed to share the same body. Now al-Asmar spoke.

“You are a prisoner. It is their job to punish you.”

“So what you’re saying is, if I’m all trussed up like this unable to defend myself, they’ll do their worst. But they can’t handle a fair fight?” 

Al-Asmar released Steve’s cheek. His head waggled around, and he couldn’t stay focused on his captor. “Who the hell do you think you are?” al-Asmar asked.

Steve finally managed a glance around the room. Major Haddad stood right next to al-Asmar with a displeased look on his face. Scarface stood behind them and looked like he’d been roughed up a bit. That made Steve smile. Then things got hazy again. He heard the sound of laughter coming from his mouth. 

“What is so funny?”

Steve looked up and Wo Fat was back again. Standing there glaring at him with his annoying self-confident smirk. 

“I’ll kill you again, you know? Just like the first time.”

Al-Asmar whirled back into Steve’s view. “Why are you laughing? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

Al-Asmar paced back and forth. “You’re testing my patience,” he said. His voice was weird. It sounded just like Wo Fat’s. Steve shook his head, desperate to clear it. 

“I should have you executed for attacking a guard,” al-Asmar threatened. 

Steve pondered that for a moment. It was hard to focus on what al-Asmar was saying. “Nah. You won’t,” he said, trying to sound as confident as possible. He most certainly could.

“You’re a troublesome man.”

“Am I?”

“Indeed. I think I’ll have you shot.”

“I think you won’t.”

“And why is that?”

Something clicked in Steve then. He squinted at al-Asmar. His face was fuzzy, and Wo Fat kept peering out through his eyes. 

He thought at that point, he may have been suffering from hallucinations, that very odd sensation when he couldn’t really tell reality from a dream. Like most SEALs, he’d experienced it before, at the back end of Hell Week. He kept reminding himself of that time and kept telling himself this was just Hell Week all over again.

There had been one question that remained in his head forever after that: What would happen if it was real? When the last bit snapped? Because simulation couldn’t prepare him for that moment when he would be stripped of his humanity. When the only thing holding him together would be the force of his will when faced with death, or something worse than death. 

He’d been trained for all that, as well as the most challenging bit, resisting interrogation, but even now he knew nothing could prepare a person for the real thing. Nothing could simulate real fear. In training, there had always been that bit of knowledge that it was all fake. That there would be an end to the torment, therefore, it was possible to endure. It was completely something else for the damn thing to be real.

But it didn’t matter. He’d sucked it up then, and he could suck it up now. Whatever these bastards threw at him, he could take it. He’d come through. He’d promised Danny he would.

“You kill me and your leverage is gone. Because this is what it’s about, isn’t it? That’s why we’re still alive. You know our people are coming for us. And you know your best option is to trade us for whatever it is you want from them. You wouldn’t dump tactical leverage like that into the bin.”

Steve was bluffing like he never had in his life. No one was coming. Al-Asmar could kill him right now if he wanted, and Steve couldn’t stop him.

Al-Asmar sneered at him. “I’ve already told you no one is coming for you. No one cares about you. You’re alive because I haven’t decided to kill you. Yet. But that’s about to change. I’m fed up babysitting an annoying piece of crap like you. You’re not worth the effort.”

“See, you don’t get it. You think you got us beat. But we haven’t given up. And if I don’t show up back in that cell soon, my men are going to get restless. You’ll have more trouble on your hands than you can accommodate. You can kill us but you can never defeat us.”

“Any troublemakers will be gunned down like rabid dogs. All of you if necessary.” 

“Sure. Go ahead and kill us all. And you’ll have a storm rain down on you like you can’t imagine. Our military will hunt you down for that. You can’t win. You know it.”

“You are a fool. Your military is weak. Your people are easy to buy. And those who aren’t don’t even know you’re here.” 

That might be true, but Steve wasn’t going to let al-Asmar call his bluff. “Look. You’ve got two choices,” he said. “Turn me loose or kill me. Otherwise, I’m done listening to your gas.” Another bluff. And an insult to boot. 

“You are a confident man, McGarrett. I will not shoot you. No, I think it will be more enjoyable to watch you remain here and die slowly,” al-Asmar said. “I still have your two friends, after all. So I think I won’t mind losing one SEAL.” 

Steve glared at him with as much defiance as he could muster.

“See you in the next life,” al-Asmar said, then he turned around and left the room with Haddad and Scarface on his heels.

They left Steve hanging there, broken and bleeding. Soon, the blood from his hands and wrists was running down his arms. It was only a matter of time before he passed out again.

* * *

Danny wasn’t sure what he had expected. But it definitely wasn’t this. 

When Joe had said they were leaving in ninety minutes, he thought they’d drive to the location. Unfortunately, it was much further away from them this time, and they’d never make it on time in a car. And driving across the enemy land for such a long distance definitely wasn’t safe either. Waiting for another night wasn’t something they wanted to do, especially not after Davis’s and Martinez’s briefing on Kaseem al-Asmar and his ways with prisoners. 

It was Gutch who’d made all this possible. How, Danny had no idea. “An old friend owed me a favor,” was all Gutch would say.

So here he was, ready to jump off the plane in the middle of the night. Physically at least. His mind, though, needed some more convincing. He seemed to be the only one really hating Joe and Gutch at this moment. 

“Can’t we just land the plane first? Get off like normal people do?” he asked, knowing the answer already.

“You want Steve back or not?” Joe said, not hiding an amused smirk despite the circumstances. 

“Of course I do.”

“Then stop whining and get ready. You’re gonna be fine.” 

Davis punched Danny’s shoulder lightly. “Come on, relax. You’ll love it,” he said. 

But Danny knew for a fact he wouldn’t. Not like he had any other option now.

“T-minus five. Check your gear.” Joe walked down the line shouting over the deafening turbulence. The back-loading ramp of the modified C-130 was down, open to black sky, and Danny’s stomach twisted once again. 

Their reference point was a two-story building in the desert. It was way off, as the nearest town was about a mile and half away. Like that place was built with a purpose in mind. 

The only good thing about this craziness was that he wasn’t jumping alone. None of them were. There was four of them from Five-0, two active SEAL operators, two former ones. One crazy guy for one of them. Danny was paired with Martinez, who definitely knew what he was doing, but it didn’t mean he liked it any better. 

Wind buffeted him as he and Martinez stood beside the others, getting ready to jump.

“T-minus three!” Joe continued the countdown. 

Danny watched as they all checked all the gear was strapped tight. He drew in a deep breath, reminding himself why he agreed to this madness. Whose life was at stake. 

Beside him, Davis, who had Kono strapped in front of him, gave his colleague a huge grin. “Never gets old, does it?” 

“This is the best part of this job,” Martinez replied. 

Danny couldn’t agree less. He wasn’t even sure it was a good idea for Davis to join them on this one, considering he’d been shot just a couple of days ago. And now he was about to jump off the freaking plane, reluctant to hear anything about staying behind. It made Danny wonder if all the SEALS were stubborn Neanderthal animals like his partner.

“One minute!” Joe shouted. 

Gutch passed the time down the line. Martinez and Davis joined them. They each raise their right hand and lifted their forefinger, passing the message to each other. Martinez made a final check of his and Danny’s gear, making sure the straps were secure. 

“You ready?” Martinez asked.

“No.” 

“Well, too late to back off now, sunshine,” the young SEAL said. 

“Thirty seconds!” Joe made a pinching gesture. 

Danny’s adrenaline spiked. His gut whispered this wasn’t what a sane man does. Hurtling out of a perfectly good airplane was for idiots, but damn if they didn’t make him one of them now. 

Joe lifted his arm over his head and swiftly chopped down. He waved them all forward and Danny was thankful he didn’t have to be the one to take the step down the ramp. Gutch and Lou jumped off the plane first, arms out, legs back, and disappeared. Davis and Kono followed. Then it was their turn. 

It was noisy and windy. Martinez leaned forward and they leaped into the blackness. Soon, he pulled the ripcord on their parachute, and the turbulence of the plane and free fall disappeared. Into the silence, they drifted toward their target below.

Just when they landed safely in the sand, Danny realized his eyes had been shut close this whole time. 

“You good?” Martinez asked as he unstrapped them from each other. 

Still feeling like he was about to throw up, Danny nodded and searched for others, who landed a couple of yards away. 

Joe and Chin were the last ones to arrive. “If you’ve got any questions, now is the time,” Joe said.

Danny didn’t have any. Joe had briefed them back in their safe house, then once again as they prepared for the jump. 

“Good,” Joe said. “Let’s go then.”


	16. Chapter 16

“Do you think they are in there?” Kono looked up from peering through her scope.

Danny’s gaze was fixed on an old building. His insides twisted with the fear this might be just another dead end. That Doris’s intel wasn’t good enough. And even if it was, they were after al-Asmar. Whether the missing men were at the same place as their target, they didn’t know. “I hope so,” he said, doing his best to remain focused.

Their team split into three groups. Kono and Danny watched one of two entrances. Lou, Chin, and Davis watched the other entrance on the side of the building. Gutch, Joe, and Martinez have disappeared in the darkness a little while ago.

Luckily, Gutch’s friend got them more than just the mode of transport. He didn’t forget to stock the plane with all kinds of gear and supplies, which Danny was more than grateful for. 

While others were watching out for movement, Gutch, Joe, and Martinez completed a circuit around the building, placing tiny boxes of whatever it was called. They were tiny wireless devices that supposedly interfered with the cameras. Danny thought Joe mentioned hijacking their feeds or something like that. Regardless, the tiny black boxes would loop the last five minutes of what they recorded, while Danny and others would sit and wait. That was the sucky part. They had to locate all the cameras and wait for Gutch to break into the software to get that damn loop going. It was agonizing, all this waiting. 

But the waiting was over.

Joe and Martinez took out what little security existed outside the building. Whoever these people were, they were overly confident. Their security was too light. Maybe that was supposed to confuse them. There was no way of knowing.

“We’re ready to breach.” Joe’s voice sounded in his ear. The comms were another extremely helpful piece of gear they haven’t had the first time. It would make things way safer and easier.

“Copy that,” Danny said, impatiently wriggling on the ground.

It was too easy to focus all his attention on that door. All he could think about was rushing in. Shooting assholes who took Steve and the other two SEALs. Bringing his friend home. Fortunately, even though he had never been in the military, his training was solid, and he wasn’t about to let his anxiousness put someone else’s life in danger. Head on a swivel, he scanned and rescanned, looking for possible threats.

Joe and Gutch made their way to Danny’s position, while Martinez joined the other team. “Cameras are looping. We can waltz right in.” Gutch tapped Danny’s shoulder in encouragement. 

Danny’s teeth clamped tight. Something definitely felt off, but it wasn’t the lack of security. That itching sensation between his shoulder blades was something he trusted. “We need to hurry.” He wasn’t sure why he blurted that out, the feeling just burst from his gut. Every instinct told him they needed to charge that door.

“Davis, what’s your status?”Joe asked.

“In position. All clear,” Davis responded.

It was killing Danny laying here in the dirt. After far too many days of waiting, they were close. He could feel it deep within himself. He had never believed in all that psychic crap, but his instincts were uncanny. “We need to go. Now,” he said. His voice was urgent. His gut insistent. “Damn, we need to move, Joe.” He was restless, but he wouldn’t move until Joe gave the order. The man had much more experience with this than he had, and Danny knew he wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. Not even for Steve.

But his friend was in there. Danny just knew it, sixth-sense or not, a visceral connection tied him to Steve. He could feel Steve’s presence inside that building, his pain, then a sudden silence. Danny felt it down to his core. 

Kono held up an infrared detector. “Nothing outside. Movement inside the building, far side. Nothing behind that door.”

“Hold up.” Davis’s voice came over the earpiece. “We’ve got one leaving the house. We go in hot or we wait. Joe, your call.”

Danny’s gut seized. The need to breach that building overwhelmed him. Joe looked at him, taking in the urgency on his face, and spoke.

“On three,” Joe called it.

They were going in hot. 

“In three, two…”

The four of them moved together as Davis’s shot rang out. With their presence formally announced, Danny’s thoughts focused in on the mission and his need to save Steve. 

Joe, Gutch, Kono, and Danny moved together, weapons out, scanning as they approached the door. That shot brought men spilling outside. They were wild, haphazard in their actions. It was total chaos, and Danny would swear Joe and Gutch excelled in it. But even untrained, Kono and Danny weren’t staying behind and moved in sync with the retired SEALs.

Those men didn’t stand a chance as they picked them off. Joe began with the first man, placing a bullet in his brains. Danny took down the second. Kono and Gutch grabbed the next two. 

The men rushed out, night blinded, which meant they couldn’t see much. Gutch fired off a few more shots, sending each man to the grave with lethal accuracy. 

They barely stopped in their tracks to take aim. Their formation remained tight as they picked the men off, never missing a shot. They headed toward the open door, slowing only to step over bodies. 

Angry voices shouted from the inside. They made it to the door and pressed up against the wall of the building. Gunfire rang out. Just random shots meant to scare them, but they didn’t even flinch. Three more men ran out, blindly shooting into the dark. Joe picked them off and they crashed on the ground. 

They could hear no other activity inside, so Joe signaled to Gutch. It was time.

Gutch moved in. Joe was right behind him, hand to his shoulder. They crouched just inside the doorway, weapons drawn as Danny and Kono followed them in. Lou, Chin, Martinez, and Davis came in just seconds later. They cleared the room and moved forward. 

The silence was startling as they moved through. The next door opened into a hallway with several doors. There was nothing to do but clear each one. 

Joe, Kono, and Danny moved to the left while Gutch, Lou, and Chin headed right. Martinez and Davis held steady, guarding their rear. Joe burst through the first door and paused.

Nothing in there. They backed out and headed to the next door. 

“Clear,” Joe called out to the team. 

“Clear,” Chin called out from the other side of the corridor. 

They passed down the hall. Weapons up. Scanning left to right. Methodically, they scanned the long hall, cleared each room as they went, and made their way to the last room at the end. Gutch tried the handle, but it was locked. 

Danny watched Davis come forward with some kind of a hydraulic breaching tool he’d only seen in the movies so far. In a matter of seconds, Davis opened up the door and the rest of them waltzed inside with their weapons ready. 

A narrow corridor lay ahead of them, lined by the row of tiny cells and Danny’s heart skipped a beat. Could this be it? Could Steve really be here? 

As they moved further in sync, his nose wrinkled at the smell of blood, sweat, and human excrements. The stench was enough to make him gag. He looked inside one of the cells. The light on his helmet pierced the gloom, revealing dried blood in various forms. Pools on the stone floor, stains, and splatter marks on the wall. There was nothing but a dirty bucket in the cell. Whoever was held here, they were kept like animals. 

Danny suppressed the angry growl rumbling in the back of his throat with the thought Steve might have been living like this for nearly twelve days.

A movement in another cell caught his eye. Apparently, it got the attention of the rest of the team too. They moved closer, carefully in case someone was hiding in there. But Martinez and Davis both dropped their guns when they got a better look, and their stoic and focused faces changed into a surprised grimace. 

Danny peeked inside. A man was curled up by the wall, his head rested on the bars. He was wearing only the pants, which were filthy and torn up, covered in stains of dried blood. His pale skin was covered in cuts and bruises, and his face beaten up to a point Danny couldn’t believe someone even recognized him. He lifted his head to look up at them with what seemed like a great effort and squinted into the light.

“Oh, shit!” Martinez’s eyes widened at the sight of the fragile creature locked up in there.

“It’s Richardson. Get him out,” Davis said to his colleague, who already started working on the lock. 

Richardson raised his eyebrows and wrinkled his forehead, staring at Martinez in disbelief. 

“You’re all right, buddy. We’ll get you out,” Martinez said to the injured man. “Just hang on.”

Meanwhile, Davis moved to the cell on the left and dropped down on his knees. “Hey, Lynch,” he called out. “Wake up, buddy. You hear me? Time for a nap is over, it’s time to go home.”

It took Danny a second to unfreeze and realize that the presence of these two men meant Steve was here too. He sprang forward, searching the row of cells one by one with Kono, Chin, and Lou on his heels. “Steve?” he called out, but no answer came back. He’d checked every one of the filthy cells, but they were all empty. “Steve!” 

The looks of disappointment and fear lined his friends’ faces too as they helped Danny to search the cells. By the time Danny returned to the SEALs, they had both cells unlocked. Davis and Joe were trying to shake Lynch back to his senses, while Martinez and Gutch helped Richardson up on his feet. 

Richardson glanced around in confusion, then his eyes landed on Martinez, who had his arm wrapped around his waist. “You… you’re not dead?” he slurred. 

“Damn straight we’re not,” Martinez said and Danny thought he’d tell him about the five men who hadn’t been that lucky, but he didn’t. Not yet.

“Easy there,” Davis said to Lynch, who was barely conscious and not looking much better than Richardson, yet trying to stand up with Joe’s and Davis’s help. “That’s it, take it easy.” 

“Who are all these people, Davis?” Lynch huffed between pained breaths, shifting his unfocused eyes from one member of Five-0 to another. “Where are the others?”

“These guys are our new friends from Hawaii. We would never find you without their help,” Davis replied, but ignored the second part of the question. Lynch didn’t seem to acknowledge the answer anyway. He kept staring into the distance, squinting his eyes as if he tried to focus on something important.

Both men looked incredibly weak and fragile, their legs barely able to support their own weight even with help, their foreheads wrinkled in confusion. It definitely seemed they had a hard time believing this was real, that their ordeal really was over, and Danny’s heart ached for them. 

The change in demeanor came when both, Lynch and Richardson, met out in the corridor. The tears threatened to fall from their eyes when they exchanged the look that spoke more than a thousand words and fell into each other’s embrace. After a few long seconds, they just let go. 

Danny never thought a day would come when he’d see a SEAL shed a tear, yet here he was, and none of the men seemed to give a crap about what others might think. Relief after all the horrors they must’ve been through was no doubt great, and Danny didn’t blame them for the emotional overload.

Davis gave Richardson a light pat on the back. “It’s all right. You’re going home, boys,” he said. “It’s over.” 

But it wasn’t over yet. The one person Danny needed so much to see wasn’t here, and a strange mix of anger, fear, and despair was flowing through his veins. The sickly feeling in the pit of his stomach intensified when Kono stated the obvious. “What about Steve? He isn’t here.”

Danny took a deep breath, frantically glancing around one more time, as though it would make a difference. As though he’d just missed a cell or something and he’d find Steve in there.

“McGarrett. We need to help him,” Lynch croaked when he parted from his friend. 

“Is he here?” Joe asked.

Lynch nodded. “He was, until… uh, maybe a few hours ago. It’s hard to keep track of time around here.”

“What happened a few hours ago?” Lou chimed in. 

“Kaseem al-Asmar showed up,” Richardson mumbled and threw a look at Davis and Martinez. “The bastard’s here too. McGarrett took down a guard and tried to call for help, but it didn’t work. Then al-Asmar came in and shit turned ugly.”

Danny’s stomach twisted with worry. “What do you mean by that?”

“Son of a bitch basically volunteered to be al-Asmar’s plaything,” Richarson explained. “To stop the bastard from killing us all right there in front of him.”

Danny ran a hand through his hair, wanting to yell in frustration. The things he’d been told about al-Asmar and Steve being in his mercy didn’t go well together. Hours. They said it’s been hours since then. He couldn’t stop the images of his friend being badly hurt or maybe dead from flooding his mind. 

“We need to move,” Lynch said, shuffling forward with Martinez’s help. “He wasn’t in a good shape when al-Asmar took him. The fuckers figured out he was in charge and he took the brunt of their anger. I can’t imagine he could take any more abuse.”

Richardson tried to follow them on his own, but after just a few steps he nearly collapsed. Gutch caught him in time to prevent the fall and wrapped Richardson’s arm around his neck to support him. “You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Richardson said, his voice a mere whisper. “Thanks.”

In awe from the injured men’s determination, Danny followed Joe and others, desperately hoping they’d find Steve on time. He didn’t want to imagine Steve in even worse condition than his two friends. It was too painful to even think about it. 

“Any idea where to start looking?” Joe asked.

Lynch gave him a nod. “The interrogation room is my guess,” he said between the labored breaths. He merely walked a couple of steps, but he looked like he’d just ran a marathon, sweat pouring down his face. “We’ve been blindfolded every time they took us there, but I’ve tried to orient myself as much as possible. I think I’ll be able to get us there.”

“Good. Lead the way, then,” Joe said. “But be careful, guys. We don’t know how many of them are still in the building. Assume the worst.”

“I sure hope al-Asmar is still here,” Richardson slurred, holding onto Gutch for dear life to remain upright. “I’ll kill the fucker with my bare hands if I get to him.”

There was no doubt Richardson wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone in his current state, but Danny kept his mouth shut. If that al-Asmar had done this to them, to Steve, he wanted him to pay too. To rip him into pieces.

They repeated the same process as before, following Richardson’s and Lynch’s directions to the other side of the building, clearing each room they passed by to make sure they wouldn’t get surprised by anyone. They met a couple of men along the way, but Joe and Davis picked them off with lethal accuracy as they made their way through. 

The itchy feeling between Danny’s shoulder blades was growing with every step and he knew they needed to hurry for some reason he couldn’t explain. 

Stepping over one of the dead bodies of the three men Davis just put out of his misery, Lynch paused. “This one. It’s Haddad,” he mumbled. “The guy was in charge around here until al-Asmar showed up.”

A bitter-sweet feeling of a little victory flooded Danny, knowing at least one of the men responsible was dead. Davis took out a phone and snapped a couple of pictures of Haddad’s face, then they kept moving. 

They reached the end of the corridor with the two rooms next to each other. “One of these, I think,” Lynch said. 

Kono stood outside the first room with Martinez and Lou, while Gutch watched out for Joe and Danny. Chin and Davis stayed with the injured SEALs down the corridor, watching for any sign of movement in there.

Sixth sense or not, a tingling sensation hit Danny’s spine. It was too strong to ignore. His hand went to the doorknob. The only thing keeping him from barging through that door was his training and years spent with Steve as his partner. 

He felt it deep in his gut. He needed to get inside. 

Now.

“On three, two…” Joe counted them down. 

Danny turned the knob. 

They both barrelled through. An angry voice of a man with a long scar across his face went down with the squeeze of Danny’s finger. He adjusted his aim in search for any more hostiles, but there weren’t any. 

But his heart twitched when his best friend came into view, terribly wounded, beaten nearly beyond recognition, and completely still.

“Steve,” he whispered, sheer terror gripping his insides.

Steve’s body was restrained and unmoving. Arms lifted up high above his head, bearing all his bodyweight. His bare feet barely touched the floor. He hung limp, trussed up like an animal. Welts, cuts, and bruises marred his flesh. Blood wept down his body and dripped onto the floor at his feet. His head hung listlessly, lolling to the side. 

“Steve?” Danny tried again as he rushed to his friend, fear creeping into his voice when he took in the blueish tone of Steve’s skin. Was he too late?

Joe didn’t wait anymore. He reached for his knife and cut through the ropes binding Steve’s battered body in place. 

Steve’s body crumpled, but Danny caught him mid-fall, draping him over his shoulders. Gently, he lowered him to the ground with Joe’s help. Cradling Steve’s limp body in his arms, he used his teeth to rip off his tactical gloves and pressing the pads of his trembling fingers to Steve’s neck, he felt for a pulse, praying he’d be alive. 

Because another option simply wasn’t acceptable.


	17. Chapter 17

Time had slowed down and Danny nearly forgot how to breathe for a couple of seconds. He couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t see anything other than his best friend’s limp body in his lap. With pads of his fingers on Steve’s neck, he prayed it wasn’t too late.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he felt a pulse, albeit weak. “He’s alive,” he announced, easing the tension in everyone’s faces. He glanced down at the fragile and broken man in his arms, taking in his injuries.

Steve’s battered body told a tale Danny couldn’t comprehend. As a cop, he’d seen a face of evil in the world. He’d seen Steve in a rough shape before, but never this bad. Just one look was enough to know that what Steve had endured was gruesome and Danny couldn’t and didn’t want to even imagine his pain. 

He was only briefly aware of more people in the room, watching them in silence. It seemed Kono, Lou, and Martinez now cleared the other room and joined them, along with Gutch. 

He gently touched Steve’s face and Steve let out a quiet groan, and though Danny knew he must’ve been in awful pain, it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Steve’s dusky skin was covered in a sheen of sweat, and he was burning with fever, but he was alive and Danny had him back. 

“Steve, babe, open your eyes,” Danny pleaded.

With great effort, Steve’s eyelids fluttered half-open after a moment. His eyes were nearly swollen shut and lined with purple bruises, his gaze clouded, his face twisted in agony, but a glimpse of those hazel eyes made Danny’s heart sing with joy. For many long days and nights he had been worried he might never see them again. 

“That’s it,” Danny encouraged him. “That’s it, stay with me.”

“D’nny?” A faint whisper made its way out of Steve’s throat. 

“Yeah, I’m right here, buddy. I’ve got you now.”

Those unfocused eyes locked onto Danny’s, glimmering with unshed tears. “ ‘m s’rry,” Steve slurred between labored breaths, grimacing in pain.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Danny said, his heart breaking at the condition of his best friend.

Steve sucked in a raspy breath, followed that with a sputtering, weak cough. He mumbled something, but Danny couldn’t make out any words out of it. He cradled him in his arms, listening to Steve’s low, painful moans complemented by uneven breaths, and looked up to his teammates. All eyes in the room were fixed on them, horrified expressions on their faces.

Steve’s whisper-faint voice broke the silence again as he tried to say something. His body twitched, but in his weakened state, he fell still again.

“What is it he said?” Joe’s senses sharpened. 

“I don’t know,” Danny said. “I didn’t quite catch it.”

Steve struggled against Danny’s hold again, more desperate this time. “Can’t… b-breathe,” he managed to wheeze out, the panic growing in his eyes. 

Danny’s heart seized. Why couldn’t Steve breathe? 

Joe dropped beside them, examining Steve’s injuries. He cut through the ropes still binding Steve’s hands and leaned his head over the injured man’s chest, and for a split second his eyes widened in fear. “Martinez! I need a medical kit over here! Now!” he called out after a moment.

Something was very wrong, Danny could hear it from the man’s unusually distressed voice. “What’s wrong, Joe? Why can’t he breathe?” 

“Looks like pneumothorax,” Joe blurted out. “We have to decompress his lung.” 

Danny’s eyes grew wide. He didn’t have to be a doctor to know it was considered a life-threatening emergency and that without immediate medical attention, Steve would die.

“Put him down,” Joe ordered as he took the medical kit from Martinez.

Fear gripping him once again, Danny complied, gently laying Steve on the floor, desperately watching his friend’s feeble struggles as his body was being starved of oxygen. He grabbed hold of Steve’s ravaged hand, as gently as possible, trying to hide his panic from his friend. “It’s all right, babe,” he whispered. “You’re gonna be all right.” It was anything but all right and Steve probably knew it, but it was the only thing to say that gave some hope. 

A hand on Danny’s shoulder tried to push him aside, but he didn’t move. Couldn’t.

“Come on, Williams,” Martinez said. “Step aside. Words aren’t what he needs the most right now.”

Danny didn’t move anyway, too stunned, too afraid of letting go. Martinez didn’t ask him again. Using the force, he pushed the blonde man aside and dropped on his knees beside Steve and Joe. Danny growled in frustration, but Martinez was right. He couldn’t help Steve right now. They could.

The seconds dragged as Martinez draped an oxygen mask over Steve’s face. Meanwhile, Joe tore off the packaging from a hollow needle he’d dug out from the medical kit. His fingers fumbled for the right spot on the left side of Steve’s bare chest. He cleaned the chosen spot and thrust the needle between Steve’s ribs. His movements were fast, but methodical, his hands steady, and Danny couldn’t understand how could he be so calm when Steve’s life was hanging in the air.

“This should help,” Joe said to no one in particular as he removed the needle, leaving the small catheter in place.

Danny watched the whole scene in abject horror, and his heart dropped when Steve’s eyelids shut close again. “Please tell me it’s working,” he said, wishing Steve would at least start breathing normally.

With his ear over Steve, Joe listened to his breaths and the sounds from the catheter sticking out of Steve’s chest, then gave Danny a small, reassuring nod. “It is. But it won’t be enough. We need to get him to a hospital. Fast.” 

Mention of the hospital made Danny freeze. Up until now, he didn’t give it much thought for some reason, but they were in the middle of a foreign country, and it wasn’t like they could just walk into a hospital in here, even if there was any nearby. But Steve needed it, otherwise they’d be bringing him home in a casket. He shook his head, trying to get those terrible images out of his head.

Joe turned to Gutch, who was standing aside, guarding the door and throwing an occasional worried glance toward Steve. “Gutch, we’re not gonna make it to the plane on time with the boys in their current condition. You think you can arrange that helo you’ve mentioned earlier?”

“Figured that much,” Gutch said, waving a phone in the air. “It’s on the way already. ETA twenty mikes.”

Joe nodded in approval. 

“Joe, I’ve got eyes on two tangos leaving the building. They are in a hurry.” Davis’s voice came from the earpiece, tearing Danny back into reality. He’d completely forgotten about the other part of the team out in the corridor, about the men responsible for all this, about everything but his best friend. “Might be our HVT. I’m going after him”

“That’s not a good idea, kid,” Joe said into the comms, his focus on Steve. “We need to get the boys out of here first. Set your priorities straight.”

Danny wanted the bastard al-Asmar dead with every cell in his body. But it didn’t matter right now. All he cared about at the moment was his best friend surviving this. 

“I’m sorry Joe,” Davis said. “But this isn’t your call. I’m not gonna let him get away. And unless Steve can tell me otherwise, the decision is on me. As long as the bastard is breathing, the mission is still on. You know that better than anyone.”

Joe’s silence was enough of a confirmation for Davis. Steve wasn’t going to bark orders anytime soon, and the fact made even more anger seep into Davis’s voice. 

“Fine,” he growled. “My call then. I’m gonna make the bastard pay.”

“All right. You’ve got ten minutes. Take someone with you at least,” Joe said eventually. “I need Martinez’s help over here. Guth, Kono, Chin, you feel up to this?”

“I’m on it,” Kono replied instantly and rushed away to Chin and Davis with Gutch on her feet.

“Lou, you go and stay with Lynch and Richardson,” Joe ordered. “Let me know if something seems off and make sure they stay put. We don’t need any more injuries.”

Lou tore his gaze from Danny and Steve and walked out of the room reluctantly. 

“Joe, the base is about forty-five minutes from here.” Martinez lifted his gaze and shook his head. “He’s not gonna make it.”

“What?” Danny blurted out, every fiber in his body screaming in fear. After all the waiting and searching, he finally had his friend back. He wasn’t about to lose him now. 

“He is gonna make it,” Joe said matter-of-factly. He leaned over Steve, re-assessing his condition again. The older man was keeping his emotions in the bay, wearing his strong mask, but Danny knew that underneath it, he was in turmoil just as much as he was. He wasn’t going to accept losing Steve either. “Come on, son, I know you can do this,” he said to Steve, whose only answer was low, a pained moan.

“Damn it, he is barely breathing.” Martinez tried to share Joe’s calmness, but he wasn’t as good at hiding the emotions as Joe was. “He’s too weak. He should be intubated.”

Joe nodded, searching the medical kit. “Then that’s what we’re gonna do,” he said. “Have you ever intubated someone in the field?”

The younger man shook his head. “Haven’t had the honor yet. But uh, I know the theory.”

“Good. That’ll have to be enough. Get him on IV first, wide open.”

Danny stood aside, frozen in time and space as he watched the two men working in unison - Martinez preparing the IV and Joe jabbing the injection with morphine into Steve’s thigh. 

“Williams, hold this!” 

Martinez’s voice brought Danny back from his reverie. The SEAL passed him an IV bag. He took it, grateful for at least a little responsibility. Standing aside, useless and helpless was killing him. He cringed at the sight of a tube being stuffed down Steve’s throat. It looked painful as hell and for the first time, he was glad Steve was unconscious again.

The oxygen tank with some kind of regulator came next. Martinez attached it to the tube and set the flow.

Joe checked his watch. “Davis, what’s your status?” he called into the comms, but no reply came back. “I repeat, what’s your status?”

Nothing. Danny’s heart seized once again, this time in fear for the rest of the team.

“Davis, talk to me,” Joe tried again. “Gutch? Kono, Chin?”

Nothing.

“Davis!” 

After a moment of silence, it was Chin whose voice sounded over the earpiece. “We’re all right, Joe. Davis just took down al-Asmar. He’s dead.”

“Good. Meet you at the front entrance in five minutes. Exfil in ten.” Joe said, throwing a look at Danny and Martinez, who were still kneeling by Steve. 

Danny allowed himself a slight smile. “You hear that? We got him, Steve,” he said, lightly patting Steve’s forearm, the only place on his body that seemed to be intact. “Now we’re gonna get you all home, you just gotta hang on, buddy.” 

“Wanna put him on a stretcher?” Martinez asked. “I can carry him, but-”

“We don’t know what injuries he’d suffered. I’m not gonna risk hurting him even more,” Joe cut him off. 

Martinez nodded, and in seconds he was deploying an army-green folding stretcher.

“Danny, help me here. Hold his head in place,” Joe ordered, taking a cervical collar out of the backpack.

Danny did as told, mindful of Steve’s injuries. As Joe fitted the collar around Steve’s neck, Danny couldn’t help but let his eyes wander up and down Steve’s body. His eyes closed as he took in a deep breath. There was no doubt Steve had suffered horribly at the hands of these men. He was freaking pissed at the degradation Steve had endured. The obvious torture they’ve put him through. It was a good thing all those bastards were dead. He would tear them limb from limb if they were alive.

When Joe had Steve’s neck immobilized, Martinez laid out the stretcher next to Steve’s body and moved to his legs. 

“We’re gonna roll him towards us on three,” Joe said, looking at Danny to explain the drill. “I’ll check his back, position the stretcher, then again on three we move him in one swift motion. Got it?”

Danny nodded, holding Steve’s head with care while Joe grabbed his upper body and Martinez had his legs. Joe counted them down, and they moved Steve into position, then Martinez strapped him to the stretcher. 

This whole time Danny’s heart was racing, thudding against his chest as though it was about to leap out. Joe’s calmness was grounding his panic, though, and knowing Steve was in good hands made him feel a tiny bit better. 

“We’re in position,” Gutch’s voice came over the earpiece. 

“Copy that,” Joe said and gave Danny and Martinez an urgent glance, “We need to move. Six mikes until the exfil.”

Without further delay, Danny and Joe picked up the stretcher and Martinez lead the way out, his weapon up and ready as they made their way to Lou and two injured SEALs. Lou’s terrified gaze landed on Steve, then it shifted to Joe.

“We have a problem,” he said, gesturing toward Richardson, who lay unconscious on the floor with his head in Lynch’s lap. 

“What happened?” Joe asked, staring at Richardson. 

“I don’t know, he was awake and then decided this was a good time for a nap,” Lou replied, panic widening his eyes. “I couldn’t wake him up.”

“I’ve got this,” Martinez said and sprang forward to his unconscious friend. 

“He needs help,” Lynch slurred, his desperate gaze locked on Martinez. 

“I know,” Martinez said. “You all do.”

“Lynch, can you walk?” Joe asked. 

Lynch nodded hesitantly.

“Lou, help him out, would you?” Joe said, nervously checking the watch. “If we don’t get to the exfil point in three minutes, we’re not getting them out of here on time, so move your asses.”

Lou helped Lynch on his feet wrapped his arm around his waist and Martinez crouched beside Richardson.

“I’m sorry. This is going to hurt,” Martinez warned him, then plucked him off the ground like he was a pillow, and draped his arm and leg over his shoulders. 

Danny was amazed at man’s strength and he couldn’t help but wonder how many times had he done this before. But Martinez was young and probably used for carrying heavy loads during his training and after it. Nothing Steve couldn’t handle too.

“How is McGarrett?” Lynch asked as he hobbled along.

“Not good, but still alive,” Danny said, watching the man’s shoulders slump in relief. 

“Attaboy!” Lynch called out. 

In no time they reached the front of the building, where the rest of the team was already waiting.

Davis’s gaze jumped from Steve to Lynch and then Richardson, rage radiating from that intense stare. “A bullet in the head was a merciful death for that son of a bitch,” he growled, and Danny agreed.

Somewhere overhead, a helicopter chopped through the air. It was loud and sounded really low. 

“Get ready. Weapons up. Head on a swivel,” Joe ordered. 

The helicopter closed in on them and Danny craned his neck looking for it. Then it was there, coming in fast, not more than twenty feet over their heads. The sound was deafening. The wind beat down on them, swirling the sand around as it landed. They began moving forward with the injured men.

They were just a few yards from the chopper when a loud shout carried through the air, and Danny wasn’t sure who was the one calling out. 

“Watch out!”

Before Danny had a chance to see what was happening, a sound of automatic gunfire echoed in the silence of the night., and bullets started whizzing around them.


	18. Chapter 18

Instinctively, Danny ducked when a bullet whizzed by his ear. His heart thudded in his chest like crazy as the fear Steve might be hit gripped him. There was no way his friend could survive a bullet hole in his weakened state. 

He followed Joe’s lead and rushed to his right to get a cover behind the nearby corner. As soon as they put Steve on the ground, Danny scanned through his battered body thoroughly, breathing out a sigh of relief when he didn’t see any new injury.

Just a second later, Chin and Kono joined them, breathing heavily, gripping their weapons. Martinez dropped Richardson’s unconscious body behind one of the two SUVs nearby. Danny was certain the vehicles hadn’t been there before. Gutch, Davis, Lou, and Lynch were crammed behind the other car. All Danny could think of was that all it’d take to wipe them out was one RPG hitting those cars. Or it could hit the chopper out in the open and make Steve’s only chance of getting help on time disappear into the dust, so he prayed those men inside wouldn’t use any this time. 

The bullets were ripping into the earth and shale across a wide range, most of them well away from them.

“Where the hell did all these guys come from?” Martinez shouted out after firing several bullets back at their attackers.

Danny wasn’t an expert in this field, but he could count. They’ve spent a long time clearing the building, and it took even more time to break Richardson and Lynch free, find Steve and provide him some much needed life-saving medical attention and get all three prisoners to the extraction point. It’s been over half an hour since the first bullet had been fired and attracted the attention of the men inside the building. Plenty of time for the reinforcements to arrive from the nearby town. Too late to help their buddies, but still on time to complicate the team’s mission.

Joe fired a few rounds at the building, where the fire was coming from. “Doesn’t matter. Just take them out,” he yelled through the noise. 

It was easier said than done, thanks to their position in the open and their attackers hidden behind the windows of the building. There was no way they could move without being shot. They were pinned down and running out of time. 

Danny once again glanced over Steve as Joe and others fought back, wanting to scream in frustration. His best friend desperately needed them to end this and get that chopper up in the air. 

“How is he?” Kono asked, throwing Danny a worried glance.

Danny shook his head, fighting the tears that threatened to fall. “Not good. We have to get him to a hospital. Fast.”

With their faces stoic as ever, the SEALs were returning the fire at the building. Someone inside was engaging them with automatic guns, and the bullets filled the air around. 

Davis’s muffled yell rose over the yard. “Frag out!”

Danny watched the grenade tumble through the air and land near the wall, where it exploded with a distinctive thump. The sound of gunfire coming from the building didn’t cease completely, but it eased a little. There was no doubt the grenade took some of their attackers out.

Rounds buzzed angrily over their heads, hitting the dirt and ricochetting off with a whine. Without even realizing it he leaned over his best friend’s still body to shield him from the heavy fire even though there was a wall between them and those men. 

The noise didn’t wake Steve up, and Danny knew they had to end this soon. “Hang on, Steve,” he pleaded, staring at the unconscious man as though he would answer him. 

“Danny!” Joe called out. “I’ll count to three, then you and Chin take Steve and run straight to the chopper. We’ll cover you. Don’t stop no matter what.”

Danny didn’t like the idea of rushing Steve out in the open, so vulnerable and unable to defend himself. But he trusted Joe. If he said that’s what they had to do, then there was no other option. If they stayed where they were, they would be picked and shot one by one sooner or later. “All right,” he said. 

“Kono, you’ll help me up here. Get ready.” Joe turned to Lou. “Lou, the same goes for you. When I say, you and Lynch run to that chopper as fast as you can. Martinez, you get Richardson in there,” Joe yelled the orders. 

“Yes Sir,” Martinez shouted back. 

“Gutch, Davis, smoke!”

Almost in unison, Gutch and Davis threw their smoke grenades as Joe and Kono laid a suppression fire. “Smoke out!” both of them called out.

“One, two…” Joe counted them down, his weapon up as Danny readied himself to run, gripping the handle of the stretcher, constantly reminding himself he needed to get Steve into safety. “Three. Go, go go!”

A heavy fire cascaded upon the building from the three men and a fierce young woman, as the rest of the team sprinted toward the chopper with their injured friends. Bullets danced along the sand as they ran, some of them missing them by mere inches. Martinez got there first, even with Richardson on his back. He loaded his friend inside, then climbed in himself, firing at someone Danny couldn’t see. Danny and Chin got there next, and Martinez paused to help them get the stretcher with Steve in. 

“Get in!” Martinez shouted and began firing off his gun again when Steve was loaded. 

Danny and Chin obeyed, ready to help Lou and Lynch, who were just steps away from the chopper now. 

Arms stretched out in front of them, they waited for the men to reach them as the bullets dug into the metal surrounding them. They were within reach when they both went down, crashing onto the ground. 

“Lou!” Chin called out with a terrified look across his face. 

Lou scrambled back on his feet, dragging barely conscious Lynch up with him. A bloody stain on Lynch’s thigh grew fast, seeping into his ragged pants. There was no doubt he’d been hit. 

“Come on, I’ve got you,” Lou said, pushing Lynch toward Danny’s arms, ignoring his painful groans. “Almost there.”

Danny didn’t miss Martinez’s terrified expression as Lou, Danny, and Chin dragged the bleeding man into the chopper. The fear he’d lose another one of his friends was written all over his face. His eyes hardened after a few moments, partially masking the worry. “You good?”Martinez asked without looking at Lynch, readjusting his aim to take down another man.

“Fucking fantastic,” Lynch growled between pained breaths as he sat on the floor, his gaze on jumping between Richardson and Steve. The deep pain that had nothing to do with his injuries was etched in his red-rimmed eyes as he glanced them up and down.   
Danny’s gut twisted. He was torn inside, wanting to do all the things at once - be by Steve’s side, do something for unconscious Richardson, stop Lynch’s bleeding, return fire at their attackers. It was overwhelming and incredibly stressful to be under attack like this, with part of the team still out there, fighting, and three men down, Steve included. He was frozen. Stuck. In a trance-like state, wondering if he was just stuck in a terrible nightmare, because it certainly couldn’t be real, could it?

“Danny? Danny!” A rough shake of his shoulders and Chin’s terrified voice brought him back to reality. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He nodded, although not really sure, and sucked in a deep breath as he took in the scene again. 

Steve’s still and battered body secured to the stretcher on the floor of the chopper. Richarson not looking much better splayed on the floor right next to him. Lou with both of his hands on Lynch’s newest wound, blood soaking through his fingers. Lynch’s eyelids fluttering as he fought to remain conscious. Chin’s worried eyes fixed on him while checking for Richardson’s pulse. Martinez with his rifle up, cascading heavy fire upon the enemy. Joe, Gutch, Kono, and Davis still pinned down behind their covers, doing everything possible to reduce the enemy’s numbers. The heavy smell of cordite, blood, and sweat in the air.

A sickly feeling washed over him once again. 

“Hey, Williams,” Martinez called out, preventing his mind from locking down. “Move your ass over here. We’re gonna cover the guys so they can get here.”

An instruction. A clear purpose. Doing something useful. That’s exactly what he needed. 

He let Lou and Chin with wounded SEALs, slung his rifle from his shoulder, and joined Martinez by the side of the helicopter, looking for the targets in the scope. 

“Joe, we’ll cover you. Move!” Martinez called out through comms, then turned to Danny for a second. “You ready, Williams?”

He wasn’t. But lives depended on him, including Steve’s, and there was no time to waste. He nodded, burying the fear under the thick layer of anger and adrenaline. 

“Moving!” Joe’s call came. 

It was Martinez’s and Danny’s turn to provide suppression fire as the rest of the team rushed toward the chopper. They kept the enemies at bay for several seconds only, but it was long enough for Joe and others to get to them safely. 

Joe was the last one to climb in, and by the time Gutch helped him up, the chopper was a few inches up from the ground. The deafening sound of the helicopter mixed with the bullets ricochetting of it. A few seconds later, although still under fire, they were up in the air and less and less bullets reached them, until the sounds of gunfire died down completely.

They’ve made it. Danny couldn’t believe it for a second, and he kept looking around frantically, counting the heads in his terrified mind. As soon as they were in a safe distance from that hell on the ground, he realized Joe had been shouting orders since he’d hopped on the helicopter. 

“Lou, keep the pressure on that wound. Martinez, stop the bleeding. Chin, check on Steve, make sure the catheter in his chest isn’t clogged. Keep bagging him with oxygen. Lynch, don’t you dare to close your eyes, you’ve gotta stay with us.” And more. All while keeping his voice more or less calm and professional and once again, Danny was in awe from the older man’s ability to keep his head cool even after a dangerous shootout, trying to save three lives at once in a crammed helicopter.

“Hey, man, stay with me,” Martinez pleaded as Lynch’s eyelids fluttered. 

With a great effort, Lynch opened the eyes again, his gaze fixed on Steve and Richardson for a moment before turning back to Martinez and Davis. “You gotta save them,” he mumbled, his voice a faint whisper. “Don’t let them die.”

“No one is dying here. Not anymore,” Davis assured him. 

A sad smile stretched over Lynch’s face. “Can you… can you do something for me?”

“No.” Davis and Martinez said almost in unison and Danny sensed what was going through Lynch’s head. 

“Tell Amy that-”

“I said no, damn it!” Davis yelled. “Whatever you want to tell her, you tell her yourself!”

Danny wondered who was Amy. His wife? His daughter? Goosebumps appeared on his skin with the thought. He hoped Davis had been right and no one else would die out here. He stopped listening to Lynch’s heartbreaking pleas and focused on what could he help with. Thankfully, Joe’s instructions followed fast.

Joe knelt next to Richardson, opened up his airways and listened to his breathing while checking his pulse. “He’s in shock,” he announced after a moment, turning to Danny. “Danny, pass me the medical kit.”

Danny obliged and watch Joe fitting an oxygen mask over Richardson’s face. 

“Can I help somehow?” Kono asked. 

“He needs fluids. There’s IV in my backpack,” Joe said, lifting his head to check on Lynch, who was drifting away from consciousness, and Steve, so pale and still. “Get one for all of them. Do you know how to change the bag?”

“I guess,” Kono replied. 

“Good. Steve needs another one,” Joe said. “Chin will help you. Set it wide open.”

Danny helped Joe to set up the IV for Richardson, while Davis did the same for Lynch. It felt surreal. Slow-motioned. Joe kept instructing, and Danny did as told without much thinking. By the time he was done with Richardson, Lynch wasn’t responding to Martinez’s attempts to get a reaction from him, and the floor underneath him was stained crimson. 

The situation seemed desperate, and frustration amongst the team was growing. Danny certainly wasn’t the only one fearing for the life of his friend, and watching the desperate SEALs’ attempts to deliver fluids and oxygen to their unconscious comrades didn’t help with his anxiety. Martinez injected a dose of morphine into each of theirs IVs to at least ease some of the pain they must’ve been in. There wasn’t much more they could do, except keeping an eye on them and praying they’d make it to the hospital on time.

Gutch called it in meanwhile, announcing they were coming, but there was no doubt they wouldn’t avoid a lot of explaining and possible trouble. But Danny didn’t care. None of them did. Not if it meant giving Steve, Lynch, and Richardson a chance to live.

Danny’s focus narrowed down to his best friend, who was too weak to even breathe on his own. Fear Steve might not make it threatened to strangle him, and it was increasingly hard to stay focused.

After the call, Gutch joined Chin and Kono, whose main task was to watch Steve. “That shoulder doesn’t look good,” Gutch said after a quick assessment of Steve’s injuries. “I’m gonna fix it.

Danny cringed at the sight of Steve’s shoulder being relocated and once again he was glad Steve was out of it. It must’ve hurt like hell. Gutch placed his arm in a sling after that, huffing out an angry growl. “They’ve worked the poor kid over really good,” he said. 

“He can handle it,” Joe replied. There was no sign of pity nor anger in his voice, but Danny knew it was all hidden underneath the thick skin.

Danny was about to take Steve’s bloodied hand into his to let him know he was there, to encourage him to fight, but Joe didn’t let him.

“We’re ten minutes out,” Joe said. “Help me take his pants off. We can clean some of the wounds.”

Reluctant to strip Steve in front of everyone, but knowing Joe wanted to do that for Steve’s sake, Danny did as told. The filthy, blood-soaked bandages on Steve’s legs took his breath away for a moment. 

“What the-?”

“Damn, we need to cut these off,” Joe said. 

Joe cut through the dirty dressing carefully, and revealed two terribly-looking, inflamed wounds that nearly made Danny scream in rage. He could recognize a gunshot wound, and the holes in Steve’s ankle and a calf could only mean he’s been locked up in that filthy place with his legs shot up like this. He couldn’t imagine the pain Steve must’ve been in this whole time. Even just sitting around with such wounds would be torture, let alone all the extra violence. 

By the time they managed to get the worst of the wounds cleaned up, the pilot was announcing they were about to land. It was about time. 

All three men were still alive, but all could change in a matter of seconds. 

Danny peeked outside and saw the huge operational base underneath them. The memories of a similar one in Afghanistan lit up, consuming Danny from the inside when he remembered Steve’s lifeless body back then. The resemblance was terrifying. 

Soon, a cloud of dust whirred around them as the helicopter descended. 

Instead of feeling any relief, though, his gut twisted with worry. Getting his friend here was just the first step. But too many things could still go wrong. And the first sign of trouble was the anger in the faces of two uniformed men marching toward the chopper as soon as it touched the floor.


	19. Chapter 19

Danny struggled to hold his feelings at bay, not to fall apart completely when he watched Steve being taken away from him. Maybe if he didn’t allow panic, then on some level the crisis would feel less real.

When a group of men and women rushed in to grab Steve and the other two wounded SEALs, it was Joe who kept talking to them. It was Joe who listed everything that might help the medical staff to save their lives. It was Joe who kept his head cool under the pressure and explained what had happened, or at least what he was certain of.

Danny didn’t really remember what was said, because they knew so little, but they all knew enough to know that Steve might not survive. He couldn’t even entertain that thought.

He was only briefly aware of two soldiers talking to Davis and Martinez, and ordering them to get their asses to the office. The words were a blur to Danny, but he noticed that Joe and others treated them both as someone in charge. The name on the uniform of the older one read Smith, the other one’s name was obviously Turner, but that was all Danny managed to take in.

There was no need to be an expert to understand they were probably in trouble. None of them was supposed to be here, let alone hunt the military targets in order to rescue the captured soldiers. Martinez and Davis weren’t in a much better situation either. After the ambush, they’ve lost the comms with the operational centre, but instead of finding a way to contact their commanding officer and return to the base, they’ve been on their personal mission for twelve days, fearing their friends would never be saved on time if they followed the protocols. Dragging four civilians around with them certainly didn’t help either.

But he didn’t care. None of it mattered right now. He could deal with the consequences later. He just needed Steve to get better and come home safely.

After a few brief sentences exchanged between the men, Joe and Gutch were ordered to join the debrief, and Danny and the rest of Five-0 were, luckily, allowed to check on Steve in the medical centre meanwhile.

The makeshift building looked like anything but a proper hospital from the outside, but Joe had assured Danny that it was equipped as good as one back home, and that the group of surgeons, nurses, and other specialists were more than able to perform a life-saving surgery out in the field if necessary.

Yet, even knowing Steve was in good hands, Danny couldn’t get rid of his anxiety as he waited in the corridor. The curious looks of uniformed men and women passing by landed on their little group every time they noticed them, and Danny realized they just weren’t used to any civilians waiting for the news about their loved ones. But they didn’t seem to mind.

One of the nurses was particularly sweet and kept offering them tea or coffee. She also got them a couple of chairs to sit on.

Time had passed and there was no news. He reminded himself he should be thankful that no doctor was heading toward them looking grim, ready to tell them that Steve was gone.

“You’re gonna walk a hole in the floor if you don’t stop,” Lou said when Danny walked up and down the same line for probably the thousandth time. “Sit down, man.”

Danny’s shoulder slumped when he came to stop. “I… just…” He wanted to say something, to express his fear and anger and frustration, but his voice got stuck in his throat and all he managed was a slight shake of his head.

Reluctantly, he complied and took the chair next to Chin, who gave him a light squeeze of his shoulder, trying to comfort him without the words.

“Boss is gonna be all right,” Kono said, throwing Danny a compassionate look. “He has to be.”

Danny just nodded. But he wanted to scream. To run inside and somehow make this horror end. The clock didn’t stop, but it felt as if time itself were a form of torture. There was so much pain and thickness in the air. None of them spoke much as they waited, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Each of them filled with fear, uncertainty, and hope.

The time in waiting was agony. Danny couldn’t believe that Steve might die, and yet in his heart he knew it was a strong possibility. The agony wasn’t even the right word. Sheer terror didn’t even define his emotional state. No words could do so. It was amazing how slowly two hours could pass by, and the fear of what might happen was almost paralyzing.

He leaped out of the chair as soon as he noticed an older man in light-blue scrubs marching toward them.

“Detective Williams?”

“That’s me,” Danny said.

“I’m Lt. Colonel Bishoff,” the doctor introduced himself with a pretty grim look and Danny’s heart seized. “I’ve been informed you’re waiting for the news about Lieutenant Commander McGarrett.”

“That’s right. How is he?” Danny asked, his voice trailing off, gut twisted in dread.

The doctor let out a heavy sigh, which only intensified Danny’s worries. “I don’t even know where to start,” he said. “He’s alive, but in a critical condition. Considering the needle thoracostomy that had been performed, I assume you already know about the pneumothorax. It’s been caused by one of his fractured ribs puncturing the lung.”

Danny nodded, relieved Steve was at least alive, and let the doctor continue, desperately expecting some good news.

“He has a concussion, which doesn’t surprise me after what I’ve heard and seen. He’s also treated for respiratory failure and sepsis with a septic shock. Pneumonia and kidney failure complicates his bad situation even more, as well as severe malnourishment and dehydration,” he continued. “His blood pressure is unstable and at the moment he’s receiving large fluid boluses through the central line, as well as powerful broad-spectrum antibiotics, and Levophed, which is a vasopressive medication for a low blood pressure and developing sepsis.”

Taking in a deep breath, Danny tried his best to absorb every doctor’s word. It wasn’t easy, though, as he couldn’t imagine Steve going through all that, and his heart ached just with the thought of what his best friend had been through to end up in such a terrible, life-threatening condition.

The doctor paused for a moment, but obviously, he wasn’t done just yet. “His shoulder has been dislocated, but you already know that too,” he said. “There is also ligament damage in the shoulder that would need to be fixed as soon he is stable enough. On top of that, he has a wrist fracture and an ankle fracture with severely infected gunshot wounds to both of his legs. He may also have a bloodstream infection and probably a urinary tract infection too. We’re still waiting for the results.”

Unable to process everything, Danny shook his head. The growing list was just too much to take in. This wasn’t happening. It had to be a terrible, terrible nightmare and he’d had enough. He needed to wake up soon, because there was no way Steve could be this sick.

“But he’s… uh…” Danny stuttered. He feared that he already knew the answer, but he had to ask the question that had been lingering on his mind anyway. “He’s gonna survive, right?”

“I can’t promise anything. Kidney failure alone has close to a fifty percent mortality rate. And that’s not even considering the septic shock, which increases the risks even more, and potentially fatal pneumonia. He’s got a terrible infection in his wounds and he’s extremely weak. You look like a smart man. I’m sure you can figure out the odds.”

A sickly feeling washed over Danny. Steve wouldn’t die. He couldn’t.

“I’d say the next twenty-four hours will be extremely critical to his survival,” the doctor said. “We would need to see his blood pressure stabilize, his temperature come down, and urine output improve. But even if he does survive, he might never be able to walk normally again as the fracture in his ankle hasn’t been treated properly for too long. We’re not even sure if he’s neurologically intact. We’ll have to wait until his condition stabilizes to determine that.”

Danny didn’t know what to say. The harsh reality of Steve’s condition was much worse than he could have imagined, and the doctor’s words stuck on his mind.

“He’s settled in the room, if you want to see him. But one at a time, please. He needs to rest,” the doctor added.

Ready to follow him, Danny stepped forward, certain his colleagues wouldn’t mind. But Joe’s voice behind his back stopped him. He turned around to see Joe and Gutch walking toward them.

“Hey. Any news?” Joe asked.

“I’ve just told your friends about my patient’s condition,” the doctor replied. “I’m sure they’ll fill you in. I’ve gotta go now. I have other patients to attend. When you go see McGarrett, turn right on the end of the corridor, first door on the left.”

Danny thanked the leaving doctor and caught Joe’s gaze. With all the adrenaline of the fight now gone, there was no denying the worry in the older man’s eyes. “He’s alive for now. But, uh…” Danny’s voice trailed off. “It’s bad, Joe. Really bad.”

“How bad?” Gutch chimed in.

“Kidney failure, respiratory failure, sepsis, pneumonia, infection in the gunshot wounds, numerous fractures, and the list goes on,” Chin summed it up when Danny didn’t answer.

Joe let out a sigh and took a moment to mask his fear behind the stoic facade. “As I said, he’s gonna be fine,” he said and Danny wondered if he really believed it.

“How did the debrief go?” Chin asked.

Gutch pursed his lips. “Not great. They’re not happy.”

“Captain Smith insisted we should’ve let them know when we’ve found out they’ve been captured, and let them handle it,” Joe added. “And don’t even get me started on Davis and Martinez not contacting them nor coming back here straight away after that fiasco. I’m pretty sure they won’t be sent on another mission anytime soon, if at all.”

“What did you tell them?” Danny asked.

“The same I’ve told them the last time,” Joe said. “That Steve, and his two teammates in this case, needed help, and we did what we had to do. And that we would do it all again if necessary.”

Danny was well aware of Joe’s court-martial that had ended up in ending his career four years ago when Steve had been captured by Wo Fat in North Korea, and Joe hadn’t hesitated to risk everything to go get his friend back with help of a few SEAL buddies and Five-0. He would never forget the older man’s sacrifice. Without him, Steve would certainly be dead back then. And now he did it again.

“Thanks, Joe.” Danny met Joe’s eyes.

“Don’t thank me. As I said, I did what I had to. I’m just glad we got him out of there. The rest is up to him now.”

“There’s something else, though,” Gutch said and everybody looked at him in anticipation. “Obviously, they’re not happy with a bunch of civilians roaming around the base, so they’ve arranged the transport back to the States for you. You’re leaving in one hour.”

“What? They can’t do that!” Kono complained.

“They can. And you’re actually lucky that they’re just sending you home and that you won’t be facing prison time. You can thank Commander Turner and Captain Smith on your way out of here.”

“No. Not gonna happen,” Danny snapped, fire burning in his eyes. “I don’t care who said what. I’m not going anywhere without Steve.”

“Relax,” Joe said. “I knew you were gonna say that. I’ve explained that you come as two in one package and managed to convince them to let you stay with Steve.”

The anger and dread that had flooded him just seconds ago dissipated slowly from his veins. He had no idea how Joe had managed to do that, but he didn’t care. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“You’re welcome.”

“I want to go see Steve so-” Danny gestured toward the corridor on his left.

“Go ahead,” Joe encouraged him.

Danny turned to Kono, Chin, and Lou, and threw them an apologizing look.

“It’s all right, Danny,” Chin said. “Just bring him home soon. We’ll see you both in there.”

He nodded, and headed down the corridor, anxious to finally be by Steve’s side again. Taking a deep breath, he readied himself before pushing the door open. But when Steve’s bed came into view, he had to swallow back the tears anyway.

Steve was eerily still and quiet, laying under a thin blanket. His eyes went from being red and swollen to turning black and blue. He had blood pressure cuffs on his upper arm and a pulse oximeter on his finger. His other arm was resting in a sling. His wrists were bandaged up and each finger on his hands neatly wrapped up. There was a central venous catheter sticking out of the right side of Steve’s neck and Danny cringed at the sight.

He knew Steve would probably be hooked up to a lot of things, but it was still too much to actually see it.

Steve’s mouth was held open by the large ventilator tube, and the machine attached to it did all the breathing for him. When the ventilator took a breath, so did Steve. The regular sound of the machine forcing down oxygen into Steve’s body was unnerving, and along with steady beeps of heart rate monitor, it was the only sound Danny could hear.

As a result of a collapsed lung, a chest tube was placed between Steve’s ribs to drain the air between the lung and the chest wall, allowing his lung to re-expand. This tube just added to the number of plastic tubes that ran to and from his body as well as a list of medical conditions.

He found a chair in the corner of the room and set it by Steve’s bedside, then lowered himself into it with a pained sigh.

As he took Steve’s good hand into his, he felt the tears burn in his eyes, but refused to let go. It was beyond his comprehension how could anyone do this to another living creature. How could anyone be so evil to cause so much suffering to another human being. There was no reason, no excuse good enough to justify such brutality.

There was no way for Danny to silence the pain and fear that ripped through his heart when he studied every bruise, every cut, every tube sticking out of Steve’s body. The reality of the situation was heavy, real, and terrifying. It felt as if an elephant were sitting on Danny’s chest, crushing all the life inside him. He was exhausted and terrified, but he knew somewhere in himself that he couldn’t afford to fall apart, because Steve needed him.

Holding Steve’s hand, he sat there, praying to God his best friend would pull through. “You can do this, buddy,” he whispered, gently running his thumb up and down Steve’s knuckles. “I know you can.”


	21. Chapter 21

The seconds felt like hours as they ticked by and Danny wasn’t even sure how could he physically stand up in such great pain. It seemed like it took all of his energy to be able to exist and survive. 

There were moments when he wondered whether what was happening might all be some form of an unbelievable nightmare, but the more minutes and hours passed without being shaken awake from it, the more he began to understand that this situation was all too real. 

His vigil at Steve’s bedside was only interrupted by regular visits of the nurses to check on their patient for long hours in a row. Without much improvement of Steve’s condition.

He didn’t even realize how tired he was, until he startled awake to a door opening. Realizing he’d fallen asleep in the chair with his head on Steve’s bed, he sat up straight and shook himself back to senses to see the nurse coming in. 

“Don’t you think I haven’t seen that,” she said. 

“Seen what?”

Her gaze shifted to Steve, then back to Danny. “He’s not waking up anytime soon. You look like you could use some rest yourself. And something to eat. Maybe a shower too.”

Danny realized he hadn’t had a shower for a week now, and he’d been wearing the same sweaty clothes for days. Steve’s blood was all over his shirt and he hadn’t managed to wash it all away from his skin either. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Didn’t have an opportunity to-”

“No, it doesn’t bother me at all,” she said. “I’m used to worse. I just think you’d feel better if you took care of yourself a little. Your friend is in good hands.”

He shook his head. Even if he wanted to leave Steve, there was nowhere he could go and get some sleep. It could surely be arranged, but it would mean leaving his friend alone. “I’m not that tired,” he lied. “And I’d love a shower but I didn’t plan for that when packing my luggage.”

The nurse gestured toward an empty bed on the other side of the room, not buying Danny’s lie for a second. “You can take that bed. We don’t need it at the moment. A towel and some clothes can be arranged easily. Just like the food.”

The idea of a shower and bed was extremely tempting, but there were more important things right now. “I’m fine, but thanks,” he said, trying to fake a smile and failing miserably.

Danny watched the nurse as she performed a brief examination of Steve’s vital signs and his breathing, and injected yet another dose of antibiotics into his bloodstream. When she was done, he looked at her, hope glimmering in his eyes. 

The nurse must’ve seen his unsaid question coming. “No change,” she said. “His respiratory rate isn’t improving at all. Heart rate is a hundred twenty-two beats per minute, blood pressure eighty-six over fifty, temperature nearly a hundred three degrees, which is just a slight improvement, not good enough. He really has to get better soon in order to survive.”

Unable to hide the disappointment, Danny nodded and watched her leave before shifting his chair closer to Steve. Deep pain stabbed at his heart when he replayed the doctor’s list of Steve’s medical conditions and his prognosis. It’s been almost twelve hours since he’d entered Steve’s room and he stopped counting how many times a nurse had summed up those almost identical numbers for him.

“Don’t you dare to die, Steven,” he whispered, his glossy eyes fixed on Steve’s puffy face. “You hear me? You have to fight just a little longer, all right?”

The eerie silence was the only answer, but Danny hoped somewhere deep inside, on some unconscious level, Steve would feel his presence and hear his pleading voice. So he kept murmuring quiet, soothing words, kept reassuring Steve with light touches from time to time, wishing it was enough to bring his best friend back. 

He didn’t know how much time had passed before the same nurse showed up in the room again, and he shifted his attention from Steve to her. She was holding a sandwich and a big glass of orange juice. She set it on the bedside table next to the empty bed.

“Eat,” she said with a slight curl of her lips. “It’s an order.”

Just when Danny saw the hint of a smile on her face, he realized how attractive she was. Dark hair hung over her round face. Beady green eyes watched over him with authority, suggesting she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She stood there, radiating empathy, strength, and confidence despite her delicate frame. In different time and situation, Danny wouldn’t resist a comment which might lead to inviting her out for dinner, but it wasn’t one of those times now. Not with Steve’s life at stake.

“Ah, an order. I’m afraid you don’t have any authority over me,” he said instead. 

“And I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” she replied. “You’re no good to your friend if you’re dead on your feet. He’ll need you when he wakes up. Isn’t that a good enough reason to take care of yourself?”

Danny couldn’t argue with that. Maybe he could try and force some food down his shrunken stomach. “All right. Thanks,” he said, searching for her name tag.

“Patricia,” she said after a moment. 

He met her gaze. “Thanks, Patricia,” he said and watched her disappear with a victorious smile on her lips.

She was back in a minute with a stack of neatly-folded clothes, a towel, and a small bag including a toothbrush with toothpaste, a shampoo, and a shower gel. She left it on the empty bed without a word and after checking on Steve again, she gestured toward the food. “When you finish that, I’ll show you where a shower is. Then you get some rest,” she said and walked away without waiting for a reply.

It took a while, but he managed to eat half of the sandwich, and even though he’d love a hot shower and clean clothes, he decided against leaving Steve alone for any longer than absolutely necessary. Sleeping wasn’t an option either. Despite the exhaustion, both, mental and physical, it was impossible to turn off all the wheels that were spinning inside his head for long enough to get some rest. He was not only afraid that something sudden would happen and Steve would be in dire straits, but he was aware that Steve’s life was still hanging in the balance. 

The hours ticked by and there was a certain amount of desperation that filled Danny’s mind. It was like being in a state of absolute despair, but having to learn how to calm his heart in order to function. 

When Joe and Gutch showed up later on, he met them in the corridor and shut the door on Steve’s room, grateful for a little distraction. But studying the grim expressions on their faces, he knew something was wrong. 

“What happened?” he asked.

Gutch exchanged a brief look with Joe. “Lynch didn’t make it,” he said. 

Danny’s jaw dropped. “What?” 

He couldn’t believe it. After surviving twelve days in captivity, Lynch had died anyway. Despite knowing all too well all three men were brought in sick, injured, and weak, there had still been hope for all of them until now. Lynch’s passing just reminded Danny that Steve could be next. And despite not knowing Lynch personally, Danny’s heart ached for all of his remaining comrades. It was hard to imagine losing so many friends at once, and now another name joined the long list. 

He couldn’t imagine what Steve would feel like when he would find out. Losing more than half of a team under his command, including one of the men who had been through hell with him, would no doubt hurt more than all the physical injuries. 

“What about Richardson?” Danny asked.

“Still asleep, but he’s stable for now,” Joe said. “How is Steve doing?”

“He’s stubborn as always,” Danny summed up. “There is a slight improvement, but not nearly enough. If he doesn’t get better in the next few hours…” Danny’s voice began trailing off. He took a deep breath, pushing the thought of what might happen out of his head. 

By now even Joe’s brave facade was losing its strength. It was almost easy for Danny to see the pain and worry in the older man’s eyes, even though he wouldn’t admit it. 

“Would you mind if I stayed with him for a few minutes?” Joe asked. 

Danny remembered the doctor’s orders. If Joe stayed, Danny couldn’t. But maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, after all. Steve wouldn’t be left alone and Danny could finally wash the blood and sweat off his skin meanwhile. 

“Sure,” he said. 

He let Joe inside, and after exchanging a few more sentences about Steve’s condition with Gutch, he took the clothes he’d been given and went to find Patricia, who gladly lead him to the showers. 

The warm water felt glorious, and Danny tried his best to ignore its pink hue as it disappeared in the drain underneath him. He wished it’d wash away all the pain in his heart as easily as Steve’s blood off his skin. But nothing could do that. Nothing except Steve getting better. 

It was probably the quickest shower he’d ever had in his life. Fearing something terrible might happen while he was gone, he rushed back to Steve’s room and breathed a sigh of relief when he found him just like before, with Joe by his side. 

Joe glanced Danny up and down as he burst into the room. He didn’t say anything, but Danny knew he was staring at the army-green cargo pants with a digital camouflage pattern he was wearing along with a plain black t-shirt. There was no doubt Steve would make some annoying comment on that if he could. 

The thought of a possibility of never hearing Steve’s voice again, never hearing him say “Have you ditched your tie and switched to cargo pants, Danno?” or never watching him consume his favorite meal in a rush like a five-year-old, or never seeing his goofy smile again, almost brought Danny to his knees in sadness. 

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Joe said, standing up from a plastic chair. “But you should get some rest too. I will gladly take a turn and stay with Steve if you want to catch some shut-eye. I’m sure we’d find you someplace to stay.” 

Of course Joe wouldn’t mind, but Danny didn’t want to sleep, let alone leave the room again. He thanked Joe for the offer and took his place by the bedside as soon as Joe had left. 

But more hours blended together in a blur, more regular checks had been done, and Danny decided to stretch himself on the empty bed. He was determined not to fall asleep until Steve’s condition improved. Utterly exhausted, though, he laid his head down, stared off into space, and listen to the sounds of Steve’s ventilator and regular beeps of his heart rate monitor until it lulled him to restless sleep, despite his best effort to stay awake.

A soft voice of a nurse woke him up sometime later. He opened his eyes and the first thing he noticed was the darkness outside, meaning he must’ve slept for hours. The next thing he realized there were two nurses over Steve, and it sent his heart into a panic for a moment. 

“What’s going on?” he asked, standing up way too fast. “Is he all right?”

Both nurses turned their attention to Danny. “Calm down, Detective,” one of them said. “We were just checking on Commander McGarrett.”

“How is he?” he asked, scanning over Steve quickly. 

“Looks like the treatment’s finally working,” she said. “His temp went down again and blood pressure is a little higher than the last time. His urine output improved as well, which is good news.”

A little flame of hope ignited in Danny’s eyes. He knew Steve wasn’t out of the woods by any means, but it definitely was a step in the right direction. 

“He really is a fighter, isn’t he?” the other nurse said. 

Danny’s eyes landed on Steve again. “Yeah, he is.” 

The nurses left him alone with his thoughts again, and he went back to making sure Steve knew he was there, to encouraging him to heal so he could go home to the ohana that missed him like crazy. 

The nurses and Steve’s doctor kept coming in and out for the next couple of hours, ensuring Danny about Steve’s condition stabilizing slowly. Danny was asked to wait outside when the team of the doctors and nurses gathered up around Steve in the morning, and long minutes in waiting were agonizing. Steve’s attending doctor, Lt. Colonel Bishoff, made his way to Danny as soon as they were done to share the news. 

He informed Danny about Steve’s improved vital signs and kidney function, and about the feeding tube that would join the amount of the tubes already attached to Steve. Danny didn’t like it, but it wasn’t optional if Steve were to get better. 

The next day had passed in a similar fashion, with Danny worried sick the whole time. He’d managed to call the team and update them on Steve’s condition. A call to Grace and Charlie was next, and their questions demanding answers on what was going on were heartbreaking. He wanted to be with them. To hug them and promise everything would be all right, that he’d bring their precious uncle Steve home really soon. But he could only say he was trying really hard to do so, without mentioning Steve’s current condition. 

Later that day, the doctor came to inform Danny that the chest tube would be finally removed and Steve’s fractures would be fixed in the morning if he continued to get better at this pace, which Danny was grateful for.

Joe had come to visit again, giving Danny a much-needed break for a bathroom and coffee, which he’d reluctantly taken. But it wasn’t the only reason Joe had come. His words were whirring in his head even now, hours later. 

“I’ve talked to Richardson when he woke up,” Joe said. “He thinks they’ve been set up. He said Steve had been certain of it.”

“You must be kidding me.” Danny couldn’t believe it. Why would their own people do something like that? And more importantly, who? “Any idea who was it?”

“No. I don’t know who we can trust, but if he’s right, I’m going to find out who had done that. Gutch is already working on it. I thought Five-0 could help us with that,” Joe said with a stern-looking face. It was clear he wasn’t going to let this one go, and Danny wouldn’t either. 

“I’m sure the team will be more than happy to help,” Danny said. “Just let them know what you need.” 

He’d been in turmoil ever since he’d learned about the betrayal. The strange mix of sadness and anger flooded him every time he started to think about it, wondering who he could and couldn’t trust around here, and who would benefit from such a terrible act. One thing he was certain of. He would rip that person in pieces if he got the chance.

He wanted answers. But right now, his priority was Steve. And there was no doubt the rest of Five-0 with Joe and Gutch would figure it out. 

The second day of Steve’s stay was coming to an end, and Danny was just returning from a quick trip to the bathroom, when he heard a high-pitched alarm somewhere close. The nurses rushed past him and he picked up the pace too, a terrible feeling he couldn’t explain chilling him to the bone.

As Steve’s room came into view, his heart seized. The alarm he’d heard was coming from there, and several nurses rushed inside. 

He sprang forward with a bewildered stare on his face, sprinting toward the door, but a hand on his arm stopped him. It was one of the nurses. 

“You have to wait outside, Detective,” she said and then disappeared in the doorway, leaving Danny staring at the closed door. 

He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think about anything but what was going on in there. Steve was getting better, wasn’t he? Then what the hell was wrong? 

When the sound of the alarm went silent, and the door began opening shortly after that, he held his breath, dreading the worst.


	22. Chapter 22

“What’s going on?” Danny asked the nurse coming out of the room, his eyes wide and insides twisted in fear. 

Her soft smile was probably meant to ease his anxiety, but it didn’t do the trick. “Commander McGarrett decided to scare us all by breathing over the vent, that’s all,” she said. “But it’s a good thing. It means he’s getting stronger. We had to adjust the settings on the ventilator, but there is no need to worry about that.”

He was okay. Steve was okay. More than that. He was trying to breathe on his own.

Danny’s heart fluttered and he breathed out in great relief that had spread across his body. He slipped by the nurse to get inside and make sure on his own. The panic that had stolen the air out of his lungs just seconds ago dissipated slowly with the view of Steve and the sound of steady beeps of the heart rate monitor. 

His heart was still racing when Patricia turned her attention to him. 

“Are you all right?” she asked with a worried squint. 

“I’m fine,” he replied a little too fast, trying to calm his heartbeat. “How is he?”

“He’s doing good,” she assured him. “I understand the alarm might have scared you, but he wasn’t in any danger. Actually, pretty much the opposite. He’s slowly getting stronger. His vitals are stable and kidney function is nearly back to normal. The antibiotics got the infections under control. We’ll start lowering the amount of sedatives so we can establish whether his nervous system is impaired. His fractures need to be fixed as soon as possible as well, so if nothing changes, it’ll probably be done tomorrow.”

He nodded, taking in the information with a warm feeling in his chest. Steve once again proved to everyone he wasn’t a quitter, no matter how bad condition he was in. He couldn’t wait to share the good news with the rest of the team and Joe and Gutch. 

“But he’s gonna be out for the rest of the night. I suggest you get some sleep meanwhile. Maybe go out and grab something warm to eat. You won’t find any pizza or steak here but the falafel actually isn’t that bad. You’ve been living on sandwiches since you’ve arrived and you barely got any rest. The last thing we need is another patient.” There was her warm smile again. “I’m sure Lt. Commander White wouldn’t mind staying with your friend meanwhile.”

“I…” he began, shaking his head, but realized his stomach was gurgling and he barely kept his eyes open. Maybe Patricia was right. “Okay,” he agreed eventually. Steve wouldn’t be alone, after all. He’d be with Joe and Danny would be back in a while anyway, then try and get some rest on the empty bed in Steve’s room. “I’ll ask him to come over.”

“Great.” She began walking away, but stopped in the doorway. “You know, my shift will be over in ten minutes anyway. I can show you where to find the food stand if you don’t wanna roam around the base and possibly get lost.”

Danny saw through the excuse straight away, but he didn’t mind. He’d actually be over the roof at some other time, but he was too worn down by all the worry and stress. But at least he would be back faster if someone showed him the place straight away. “Sure, thanks,” he said and watched Patricia leave. 

It didn’t take long for Joe to show up, more than eager to take his turn by Steve’s side. Danny updated him on Steve’s condition, and some relief was obvious in Joe’s expression. “I told you he’d be fine,” Joe said to that. 

Danny was aware Steve was far from fine, though. Even though he was stable and the infections were under control, he was still sick and weak and there was still a possibility something would turn around and he’d be back to square one. But he couldn’t even entertain the thought.

Patricia took him to the food stand which wasn’t far from the medical centre, and made sure he’d licked the plate clean before he was allowed back to Steve’s room. He had to admit it felt good to finally eat proper food. 

The soft pillow on the bed felt even better. Danny laid down for a while, thankful for Steve’s close proximity. Despite all the thoughts and worries rushing through his weary mind, the exhaustion took over and sucked him in. The sleep was light and restless, as he was on alert for any sign of Steve waking up, or any sign of a problem. But neither had happened while he was asleep.

It was nearly six in the morning and Danny was glued to the chair by Steve’s bed again when he caught a slight flutter of Steve’s eyelids followed by a brief shake of his head. He could barely contain his excitement when he jumped up to call the nurse, who joined him in the room. After taking his place again, he took Steve’s hand into his, making sure Steve felt his presence. 

As minutes passed, more tiny movements came from Steve, but he also looked more and more stressed. His face began growing red from constant gagging on the tube in his throat, and Danny didn’t like it one bit. 

“It’s all right, babe,” he assured him. “It’s there to help you breathe.”

Steve’s glued eyes opened up to tiny slits, and the unfocused gaze stared off in the distance while desperately fighting the tube anyway. 

It took a few attempts and a lot of soothing words, but Steve became still again, giving up the useless fight. Maybe it was Danny’s voice that had made him stop, maybe the exhaustion and weakness. Either way, even though his eyes watered from the unpleasant feeling, he wasn’t trashing anymore.

The nurse checked on him, then encouraged him to follow simple commands like nodding his head, moving his fingers and toes, squeezing her hand with his good one, and so on, which Steve did, albeit weakly, much to her and Danny’s satisfaction.

Steve didn’t stay awake for long, and he was still too drugged up to actually be fully aware of what was going on, but that brief moment definitely relieved some of Danny’s tension. 

The nurse then adjusted the settings on the ventilator, explaining to Danny it was to test if Steve was strong enough to breathe on his own now. Danny would be extremely grateful for that thing to disappear as soon as possible. 

Soon the shifts changed again, and Patricia came in to check on Steve sometime later. “Good morning, Detective,” she greeted him with a smirk and headed to Steve. 

“Morning,” he said. “And please, call me Danny.” 

She hovered over Steve for a moment and Danny watched her every move. “I think your friend is ready to go to the operation room. The surgery is scheduled in an hour.”

Glad Steve was strong enough to handle the necessary surgery, Danny left Patricia and other nurses to prepare Steve and watched them wheel him away. Although he knew it wasn’t a dangerous one, his gut was twisted as he waited for him to come back. 

When he finally laid his eyes on Steve again, a plaster cast held his left ankle in place and a splint on his right wrist peeked out of the sling that secured his shoulder. But it wasn’t all this that got the most of Danny’s attention. It was the absence of the ventilator machine that had been replaced by a nasal cannula. That fact alone nearly made Danny sing with joy. 

Steve’s eyelids fluttered as if he wanted to pry them open, but he didn’t. Patricia had told him they’d had Steve more or less awake for the extubation that had finally liberated Steve from the ventilator, and that he would probably be too tired to stay awake for now.

But Danny couldn’t wait to see those hazel eyes again. So he slumped into the chair and waited.

* * *

Steve existed in a fog of nothingness. 

This wasn’t what he thought death would be like. Darkness surrounded him, consumed him, but it felt too tangible and he was too aware of his body. 

A light flow of air danced across his body, prickling his skin. The air smelled funny, but he couldn’t figure out why. Was he supposed to feel and smell things in death? 

He tried to move, but his body was unresponsive and limp. It wouldn’t let him shift positions, but something told him he probably didn’t want to do that. A low throbbing sensation pulsed head to toe. Everything hurt.

Since he couldn’t open his eyes, he did the opposite and pinched them tight together, trying to make sense of the weird feelings. Cotton filled his mouth and shards of pain exploded in his chest with every breath. It didn’t feel right. He shouldn’t need to breathe if he was dead. It just didn’t make sense.

Was he alive? Where was he?

Adrenaline kicked into his system, hijacking veins and arteries as it surged through his body. Snippets of memories flashed in front of his eyes. Horrific images that made him want to cry out. 

Something warm and solid pressed against his forearm. He bucked and trashed with images of death and misery flooding his mind. 

“Steve, you’re safe.” A low, rumbly sound rolled through the air, landing on Steve’s senses with an odd familiarity. 

He tried to form the words, but couldn’t. His muddy mind picked through his hazy thoughts, trying to parse them into something he could understand. 

“Shh, you’re safe.” A hand gripped his own and fingers dug into his skin. Gentle, but firm. 

Protective. 

Steve tried peeling his lids apart, but they were too heavy and to cooperate. His tongue pushed past the dryness of his mouth to trace along the cracked lips. Adrenaline kept racing around his body, igniting fight or flight instincts. Unfortunately, his body didn’t want to listen, let alone cooperate. When he tried to lift his arm, nothing happened.

“It’s all right, babe. I’m right here with you.” That low voice once again stirred the memories, familiar moments in his past.

And despite his body being primed to flee, telling him he was in mortal danger, that voice felt… safe. 

Steve was confused. He couldn’t be dead. But if he wasn’t… Sudden dead coiled in his gut and a tiny murmuring sound filled the air as memories flickered and flashed. 

Death.

Pain.

All he saw was the endless suffering and death hovering over him. 

He realized it was him who was making that pitiful, weak sound. A grip on his hand tightened a little more.

“Steve, you’re gonna be all right. Just relax. You’re safe and you need to rest. Try to go back to sleep.”

Steve latched onto each word and followed it as it washed over him. His thoughts tumble, fragmenting and dissolving as he tried to catch and hold them. A weird heaviness flooded his body. While he tried to cling to the warm voice, comforting blackness folded around him. He drifted into it and floated in the void again.

That man had said he was safe, and for reasons he couldn’t explain, Steve believed him. 

It was instinctual, his knowledge he could trust this man. Like he was a part of Steve, something missing and found again. He embraced the warmth of that thought and let sleep overcome him.

He would keep him safe. 

Steve drifted away. 

Only he drifted too far and the nightmares overtook him. It filled him with dread, shooting and cutting, smothering and drowning, gutting and beating him until he gasped for breath. 

Another strangled sound escaped his aching throat, clawing its way up and out into the light. His body fought an overwhelming need to flee, but the heaviness in his limbs kept him trapped. He felt like he was trashing and fighting, but his fingers and toes were only moving the tiniest flicker. Maybe not at all, he wasn’t sure.

Steve’s eyes felt different this time, no longer glued together. He squeezed his eyelids tight together, then slowly peeled them apart. 

A blurry face peppered with stubble came into view. Warm, baby-blue eyes flickered back and forth. The blonde man stared down at Steve with tenderness and concern. He felt small and vulnerable beneath that troubled gaze, but oddly comforted. 

“Hey.” The man’s lips curved into a tiny smile. 

Steve wanted to speak, but his mind was hazy and the words intertwined together. He tried lifting his arm again, but terrible weakness weighed it down. What was wrong with his body? 

“Patricia, he’s coming around.” The man glanced away briefly. 

A presence moved in Steve’s peripheral vision and a light shone down on him. He squinted against the blinding intrusion. Something cold pressed against his chest and it was gone before he could blink. 

“Welcome back, Commander,” a female voice said.

Back from where? 

“Just keep talking to him. A familiar face will ease some of the shock,” she said, but it didn’t seem like she was talking to him.

“All right.” 

That voice was almost magical. It soothed Steve’s senses and lulled him into a peaceful trance. He wanted to bask in that voice and pretend he wasn’t wherever here might be. Or maybe, wherever he’d been before he got here. 

Refusing to be trapped, Steve focused all his strength into forming three words. “Wh… Where am I?” The words came out slurred and feathery light. He wondered if they were loud enough to be heard.

“In a hospital.” A thumb pressed against his knuckles and ran up and down in a calming manner while Steve processed the information. 

The protective tone in his voice touched Steve’s heart. He might not understand what was happening, where was he and why, or why did he think he was dead, but he believed this man. He wished he could remember, though. 

Steve’s brows scrunched as he tried to make sense of things. “What happened?” His lips cracked with the words and grated against the soreness in his throat. Why would his throat hurt? It felt raw, and his voice came out weak and raspy. 

“How about you try to rest and we’ll talk about it later, huh?” 

Steve’s brain was working overtime to figure out who was talking to him. He couldn’t shake the familiarity of this voice, but he had a weird feeling it didn’t belong here for some reason. His eyelids fluttered and his vision cleared finally. He took in the eyes he could recognize anywhere in the world. 

“Danny?”

“Yeah.” Danny cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m right here, buddy.”

Steve didn’t understand. Danny had said he was in a hospital, but the room certainly didn’t look like one he’d been in so many times it had become familiar. It didn’t feel like it either. What had happened? Why did concern and worry filled Danny’s expression like Steve was some fragile, broken thing ready to fall apart at any moment?

He couldn’t think straight and it bugged him. He also couldn’t talk right and didn’t understand what was wrong with his throat. Gaping holes filled his memory and it didn’t feel right either. He struggled to fit all the pieces together.

He took in a deep breath, hoping that would help. The sharp pain spread across his chest like fire and added to his confusion. His whole body ached for a reason he couldn’t figure out.

Voices whispered around him. Soft and feminine. But only bits and pieces reached Steve’s ears. 

_How’s he doing?_

_As expected. But he’s coming around. Inform Commander Turner, but tell him I won’t allow any questions just yet. It’ll have to wait until he’s stronger._

Commander Turner? Why-?

The pieces fell into place. 

He wasn’t in Hawaii. 

His body involuntarily stiffened as a flood of memories returned, drowning him in a tidal wave of horror. 

“Hey, Steve,” Danny’s low voice tried to soothe him, but Steve was overwhelmed and panic crept into his bloodstream.

He closed his eyes in a futile effort to block out Danny’s concern. He couldn’t stand the worry in his eyes. 

“What happened to me?” Steve’s thoughts were out of reach. He felt something lingering at the edges, pushing its way to the surface. He needed Danny to tell him. 

“I’m sure your friend will fill you in later,” the woman said. “But right now, how about you rest?” 

Rest? He didn’t want to rest. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. What happened? And why did it feel as if his entire body had been worked over? Why was he so damn weak? 

Overwhelming anger coiled inside of him, tightening in his gut. It slithered through him, seeping into his bones. “Tell me.” He gritted his teeth. 

“I’ll tell you everything, all right? But the nurse is right, you need to rest now,” Danny said.

“You need to calm down, Commander.” There was a hint of urgency in the nurse’s voice. “Breathe.” 

“Don’t tell me to calm down.” Steve gasped, desperate to draw air into his lungs.

“Steve!” The sharp snap of Danny’s voice cut through to him. 

But more memories flooded in, filling him with desperation and hopelessness.

_The bullets whizzing by his ear._

_The dead man’s body being dragged away._

_The questions he couldn’t answer._

_The sound of nails being ripped away._

_The water flooding his lungs._

_The cracking of bones._

_Pain._

_Delirious insufferable pain._

“What’s happening?” Desperation sounded in Danny’s voice. 

“He’s hyperventilating.” That was a new voice, another female who probably wanted to tell him what to do. “A panic attack.”

“Steve, babe, just look at me please.” He barely registered Danny’s pleading murmur. “You’re safe. You hear me? It’s gonna be all right.”

He couldn’t catch his breath. Sucking in air, his chest labored to fill his lungs. But it wasn’t working. His lungs burned. Dark spots danced in his vision and blackness crowded in from the edges. Darkness reached him…

_No, no, no._

A metal door closed, locking him inside a small, cage-like cell. Other men were close too, he could hear their voices. He could see the dead eyes condemning him for being the one who lived. 

_No!_

He didn’t want to give in to the darkness, but it didn’t care what he wanted. It crowded around him. 

Smothered him.

It drew him in and drowned him.

* * *

The fear in Steve’s eyes reached right inside Danny and grabbed his heart. He’d seen his fair share of evil and witnessed what traumatic stress could do to a person’s mind. When the scars run deep, psychotic breaks weren’t unheard of, but this was Steve. A strong and confident leader born without a fear gene. The superSEAL. Danny hated to think his best friend suffered from that on top of everything else. 

Steve’s reaction scared the hell out of Danny. It came on so quickly and he didn’t manage to get through to Steve to help him deal with it. No doubt recent horrors had rushed back at him. A post-traumatic flashback, as one of the nurses had called it.

His eyes closed as he took in a breath. The things Steve had been through, the things he’d seen, would probably leave its marks for a very long time. Steve and his comrades had suffered horribly at the hands of those men. The men who were dead now, but Danny still needed to know one thing.

Who had sent ten good men to their death? The men who were willing to drop everything without notice and rush into the most dangerous parts of the world, willing to risk their lives in the most dangerous missions just so people back home didn’t have to witness the evil they’d seen. 

There was nothing that would stop him from getting justice once the team would figure it out. 

He watched Patricia and another nurse checking Steve and go over his vitals, then Patricia turned to Danny. “He’s still running a fever, but overall he’s doing much better,” she assured him. “He’s just confused and disoriented. It’s normal for patients as sick as him to be extremely confused on awakening. Maybe he remembered something that had triggered the panic attack and it doesn’t surprise me at all after what he’d been through.”

Glad Steve was doing better, but still worried about Steve’s reaction, Danny spent a few more hours by his side without much happening. Gutch popped by later on for a few minutes, and even Davis and Martinez came to see how Steve was doing. The relief in their eyes when Danny updated them was priceless. They’ve also said Richardson was awake and getting stronger, but devastated from the loss of his best friend.

Then Joe showed up, looking like he had something on his mind, and Danny’s first thought was they might have figured out who was the traitor, but it showed up it was even better. He followed him to the corridor, curious what was going on. 

“I’ve talked to the doctors and Commander Turner,” Joe began. “And I’ve managed to arrange Steve’s transfer to Hawaii.”

Danny’s eyes grew wide. “How did you manage to-?” He didn’t get it. How could Joe arrange so many things around here? 

Joe’s lips curled into a smirk. “I’ve saved Turner’s ass once. It didn’t take much persuading.”

“So that’s how you managed them to allow me to stay? He kinda owes you?”

Joe glanced in a direction of the door to Steve’s room. “Actually, I owe him now,” he said, shifting his gaze back to Danny. “He was the one who’d informed me about the ambush Steve’s team had gotten into. He knew I’m close with the kid.”

Danny filed the information away, making sure to thank the guy later. Without that information, Steve would be dead and Danny would never know what had happened. “Huh. I doubt he knew you would rush in for a rescue mission, though,” he said.

Another smile tugged at Joe’s lips. “Had he known he’d never have told me,” he said. “Anyway, back to the transfer. There is one condition.”

“A condition?”

“Turner needs to debrief Steve first. There’ll be Captain Smith and a couple of CIA guys too. They’ll dig into fresh wounds. It won’t be pleasant, but it needs to be done and Steve knows it. So as soon as he’s strong enough to do that, he can go home.”

Danny could imagine the debrief and the questions, and he hated the idea of Steve going through that, but it’d happen anyway sooner or later. 

The good news was that Steve was finally going home soon.


	23. Chapter 23

Danny had been a nervous wreck since he’d learned about tomorrow’s unofficial debrief. Just a simple thought of Steve having to answer way too painful questions and listing all the details so soon after narrowly escaping death from its claws made him sick to his stomach. He couldn’t possibly imagine how Steve would be able to form words and explain what had gone wrong, how his men had died, or what had happened in the captivity. Especially in a fragile physical and mental state he was in.

He’d been warned by the doc that Steve would be extremely weak the following days, but the sight of Steve’s battered and nearly limp body as the group of nurses dangled him from at bedside in the morning to ease him back to moving stabbed at his heart. Even with the help of the nurses, those few minutes had cost Steve so much energy he’d fallen asleep as soon as his head had touched the pillow again.

Another torturous day and a sleepless night had passed and Steve had been sleeping for most of that time. He was only awake for a few minutes at times, still confused, but no longer demanding answers. There was no doubt he remembered all of it now and judging by the haunted look in Steve’s eyes, Danny was certain his friend’s mind was in a really dark place and it was breaking his heart to see all the pain in there. 

As painful as it was, Danny couldn’t hide the truth from him when Steve had asked about his two fellow captives. Expecting some kind of reaction to Lynch’s death, Danny waited in silence. But except a brief moment of a shocked expression and suppressed tears glimmering in Steve’s eyes, there was none. No words at all, yet Danny could see the smoke coming out of Steve’s head as his friend’s wheels were spinning so hard. He could see the irrational guilt written all over those hazel eyes. How Steve would be able to talk about that was a question that had haunted Danny ever since. 

There was nothing he wanted more than to be at his side tomorrow. But despite Joe’s good relationship with Steve’s commanding officer, there was no way he could manage to arrange for Danny to stay for the debrief of a classified mission. Not even Joe himself could come near. The best they could do was to be there for Steve afterward, and that was exactly what Danny intended to do. 

The transport back to Hawaii was planned for the afternoon right after tomorrow’s debriefing if nothing would change with Steve’s condition. It wasn’t likely, but there was always a chance, although Danny hoped Steve would only get better from now. He’d been roaming around and worrying for four full days now, and he honestly wasn’t sure how long he could keep going like this. He needed to bring Steve back home, stronger and getting better, in order to be able to give his mind and body some much-needed break. 

The night was quiet again, but Danny’s thoughts were too loud to allow him the luxury of sleep. He was standing by the window and looking at the starry sky, wondering how there could be something so beautiful in such a terrible place, when Steve’s faint voice brought him back to reality.

“It suits you, you know?”

Danny turned around to see his friend awake and watching him. 

“Not that frown of yours,” Steve said. “That’ll make you all wrinkly way too soon. I mean the uniform.”

He glanced down at his army cargo pants, then back at Steve with a grin. “Huh. That’s it? No jokes about it? I’m seriously impressed. It must be the concussion that’s getting to you. Or fever.” 

Steve shook his head and there was a slight curl of his lips upward for a short while. “No jokes. I like it.”

“Of course you do. You’re Mr. cargo pants.” Danny walked over to Steve’s bed and sat down so Steve didn’t have to look up at him. His smile faded as he watched Steve’s futile attempts to shuffle higher up in the bed.“How are you feeling?”

“Tired.” Steve’s eyelids fluttered. “But better, I think.” 

Danny forced a smile. “You know, about tomorrow, you don’t have to-”

“I do,” Steve cut him off. “It’s the protocol. There’s no way around it.”

“But it doesn’t have to be tomorrow. We can wait a bit longer.” Danny bit his tongue to prevent saying how terribly weak Steve looked. He didn’t need to hear that.

Steve blinked, then locked his gaze with Danny. “I wanna go home, Danny.” 

The desperation Steve’s voice carried with those simple words was heartbreaking. The message was received, loud and clear. Steve would rather have it done and over with than waiting another day. 

“All right,” Danny said, not at all convinced it was a good idea.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve done this many times.”

Danny knew Steve had done a lot of debriefs in the past, but this was different. This time six men had died, and Richardson and Steve himself were both damn close to joining them. They’ve been held in terrible conditions, kept in tiny foul cells like animals, no doubt tortured and interrogated for twelve days without knowing if there would ever be an end to that. It would mess with anyone’s head, SEALs or not. 

He wondered if Steve believed his own words because he certainly didn’t. How could anyone be fine reliving the hell like that and answering curious questions with stoic professionalism while keeping the feelings buried and threatening to bubble over? 

Steve shifted in the bed and his eyelids fluttered again. 

Danny took it as a cue. “Hey, it’s nearly one in the morning. There’s a long day ahead of you so try and get some more sleep,” he suggested. 

Steve didn’t protest and after a few more minutes he was out again, and Danny headed to bed too, hoping he would be able to shut his brain off and get at least a few hours of rest. But it turned out to be an impossible task. 

His eyes were all puffy and he stifled a yawn when Patricia and another nurse waltzed into the room at the beginning of their morning shift. He was exhausted to the core and couldn’t wait to be away from here.

“I’ve heard you two are leaving us today.” She threw him a brief glance from Steve’s bedside. “I’m really glad to hear that.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said and watched Steve arouse from his sleep with all the people talking in the room. He didn’t want to wake him up, but Turner, Smith, and others would be here soon anyway. 

“Good morning, Commander.” Patricia flashed Steve a warm smile while injecting what Danny supposed were painkillers and antibiotics into his IV. “How are you feeling today?”

It took Steve a moment to fully open his eyes and grasp the fact he was being talked to. “Uh, hi. I’m good, barely feeling anything.” 

His voice was weak and quiet, and Danny didn’t believe him. Even with a strong cocktail of painkillers, there was no way Steve wouldn’t hurt all over considering the condition he was in. 

He watched the two nurses taking care of his best friend, talking to him and making sure he had everything he needed to be as comfortable as possible. This time Steve could actually help a little when they made him sit up for a few minutes, then helped him back under the blanket with the top of the bed elevated higher. 

The tube pumping nutrition into Steve’s body was now gone too and it was time for Steve to start eating again. The nurse set the bowl of some not-so-good-looking gruel with a spoon. Looking at it, Steve’s muscles tensed and he shook his head. “Not hungry,” he said.

“You need real food if you want to get stronger.” Patricia took the bowl and the spoon in her hand. “Here, let me help you.”

Danny didn’t miss how Steve’s breaths sped up, how his eyes widened and panic crept into his gaze fixed on that bowl. “Hey, I’ve got this.” He jumped up and crossed the room in a few strides. 

Both nurses looked at him without a word for a moment, then Patricia set the food back to the nightstand. “Okay,” she said. “But make sure he eats it all. He really needs it.”

“I will,” Danny said. 

As soon as the door closed, Danny slumped into the chair and studied Steve’s expression. “What’s wrong, babe?” he asked. “I know you’re probably longing for a proper steak or a burger but that’ll have to wait a bit longer.”

“Nothing,” Steve said. “Just not hungry.”

Maybe Steve could fool the hospital staff, but Danny knew him for long enough to know his friend was full of crap. “You gotta eat,” Danny tried. “We just want you back on your feet as soon as possible.”

Steve’s frown deepened. He lowered his eyes and stared down at his ravaged left hand. The fingers were now unwrapped and revealing the missing fingernails and desolated bed nails. Steve didn’t answer, and his gaze grew absent for a few seconds.

“Talk to me.” Danny rested his hand on Steve’s thigh. That seemed to bring his friend from wherever he’d just gone. 

After a few seconds of silence, Steve spoke up without looking at Danny. “It just reminded me… that place,” he whispered. 

Danny scrunched his forehead in confusion. He expected certain things might trigger flashbacks or panic, but he wouldn’t put food on that list of things. 

“We… uh, when we got some food, it was a disgusting gruel, and it… it just reminded me of that, that’s all.”

Once again Danny’s veins were flooded with overwhelming anger at the men who’d held Steve in captivity. His friend must’ve been starving in there, and his body was enough of evidence of that. 

“Okay. I’ll see if I can get you something else, alright?” Danny offered and stood up to leave. 

Steve nodded and looked up at Danny. “Thanks.”

It turned out that whoever was in charge of cooking in here was too busy to actually give a crap about individual likes and dislikes of the patients. Luckily, Patricia was able to get him a yoghurt at least and before long, he was back in Steve’s room.

Knowing Steve’s pride wouldn’t let him ask for help, Danny offered to feed him. Unsurprisingly, Steve turned him down, but after about a minute of struggling, he gave up trying to lift the spoon and bring it into his mouth. His shoulders slumped in defeat, and Danny took over without a word. 

Right after that, Steve looked ready to fall asleep again. But Danny knew he wouldn’t have an opportunity for that for a while. The door of the room opened up soon, and a group of people walked inside. Some of them Danny knew already. Steve’s commanding officer Commander Turner, Captain Smith, and Steve’s doctor. There were two guys and a woman he’d never seen. No doubt the intelligence people.

“Detective Williams, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to excuse us,” Turner said. His voice was firm, but not hostile. Way different than the guy asking him to leave Steve’s hospital room back in Afghanistan. 

Danny’s gaze shifted to Steve, looking for any sign of asking him to stay, but his friend gave him a slight nod of instead. “I’ll be okay, Danny,” he said. 

“All right.” He breathed out, reminding himself this part would be over soon, and then they’d be on a plane back home finally. On his way out, he heard the doctor speaking to Commander Turner. 

“The same principles as with Richardson, Commander,” the doc said. “No more than thirty minutes, and please consider the condition he’s in. Don’t push him too hard. Leave that up to the official debrief after he’ll get released from medical care.” 

“Don’t worry,” Turner said. “I do not intend to make McGarrett any worse than he already is. We just need some answers, that’s all. We’ll stop immediately if there will be any signs of trouble.”

The doctor nodded. “Okay. Call me or one of the nurses if something is wrong.” He waited for Turner’s nod and walked away.

Danny followed him. He closed the door and took a deep breath, trying to find relief in the fact that these people didn’t look nearly as intimidating as those from two years ago. Quite the opposite, actually. Commander Turner seemed he actually cared. The anger that radiated from him five days ago on their arrival was understandable, considering that Martinez and Davis left the Navy out of their rescue mission, leaving him to presume them all dead and then show up just like that. Not to forget two retired SEALs and four civilians joining them. 

Thirty minutes. That’s how long the doc would let them talk. Danny could as well use this time for something useful. Like getting an update on Five-0’s investigation of a possible set up. So after finding a quiet corner of the corridor, he dialed Chin’s number, hoping for some good news.


	24. Chapter 24

Everything had changed. 

Not just the empty seats of the men who had made the ride over but were absent for the ride back. Something else. Something not visible. Something in his heart and mind. It was hard to put a finger on but Steve knew he’d been changed by what had happened on this unexpected mission. 

Boarded in a C-141, a large cargo plane, heading west to the safety of the United States, the sights, sounds, and smell of what he’d experienced stayed with him. 

A small team consisting of a doctor and two nurses moved around, splitting their attention between Steve and Richardson, checking on them, giving medications. Both of them were strapped to a litter on the side of the plane and none of them spoke much. 

The agonizingly long flight gave Steve enough time to reflect on the morning’s debriefing. 

It began with Commander Turner giving Steve information about things he wanted to be sure he learned from him. Turner went over the list of killed and injured, confirming what Steve had been dreading for the past two weeks. 

Most of the team had been wiped out. Gone.

At least Davis and Martinez were still alive. The fools had broken all the rules and ignored all the protocols to find the captured teammates on time and get them home. Davis had gotten shot and nearly killed in the process. Steve wasn’t sure if he wanted to yell at them or thank them. 

Richardson was alive too, but it’d take a long time for him to heal. But the list of survivors ended there, and Steve’s heart was bleeding for the rest of the team. The whole time in captivity he’d known they would all be dead in the corner of his heart, yet he had never let go of hope. Until Turner’s words had made it real.

After that, it was just them asking a lot of questions, trying to get a clear picture of what had happened. Steve answered them all the best he could, but when it came to that horrible last day, his voice broke. 

The failed attempt of calling for help followed by fear for the last of his men’s lives and the long night expecting his final breath while in white-hot agony was something he couldn’t form into the words. 

_What happened after that call?_ That question had triggered an attack of unwanted emotions. 

When Steve envisioned Lynch and Richardson being dragged out of their cells and forced to their knees, he barely registered his breathing speeding up. He opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again, shaking his head, unable to focus on anything but the fact it had been the last time he’d seen Lynch alive. 

His mind took him back there in an instant. Back to the narrow corridor in front of his cell. Back to Lynch’s and Richardson’s struggles. Back to knowing he wouldn’t live until morning, yet hoping his two friends would somehow make it through.

Voices came to him through the thick fog, but he couldn’t grasp the words. He thought he could hear his name, but wasn’t sure. He must’ve reacted stronger than he’d realized and the reaction must’ve scared Commander Turner, because when he came to his senses again, Turner was walking toward his bed with the doctor right on his heels. Despite the protests of the intelligence guys and Captain Smith, they were forced to stop and ordered out by the doctor, who obviously didn’t care about their authority.

Danny charged into the room soon after that, studying Steve with a scrutinizing gaze, and it took all of Steve’s effort to hold it together. He’d thought he might feel better after a few hours of sleep, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Even on his way home, the recent memories were flooding his mind. The darkness of the cell where he thought he’d die, looking across the street at lifeless bodies of his two comrades, the blood-soaked sand. The screams of wounded men echoed down the corridors of his mind. An RPG’s failed act. Bullets cracking overhead as they passed at supersonic speeds. The overwhelming smell of blood and sweat and piss. He could still smell it now.

Richardson was mostly quiet during the flight, and Steve presumed the same horrors haunted him. The same faces of those who didn’t make it. The same guilt that his name wasn’t on the list instead of theirs. The list of brave men who’d died for nothing.

One name stuck out for them both, though. It hit Steve harder than the others.

After surviving the hell he’d been through, David Lynch had died in the medical center at the base. He’d been shot to the thigh during the rescue, and he’d been too weak to handle such a devastating wound. 

Lynch was dead. 

He wouldn’t be going home to his wife except in a flag-draped coffin. He was already gone when Steve woke up in the hospital. The last time Steve had seen him, he was kneeling on the floor in front of his cell with a machete pressed to his neck, yet struggling to break free. It was hard to accept that he’d never talk to that fun-loving guy who’d done everything he could to keep Steve alive when wounded in the ambush. He had been young, but fearless. Now his smile was lost to the world, which might not notice his absence, but his family and friends would. 

Steve couldn’t imagine what Richardson was going through even though he knew the pain of losing someone so close. The two of them were very much like he and Freddie. Best friends for years, brothers in and out of work. The pain in Richardson’s eyes reminded him of a glance in the mirror six years ago, when his best friend had died during the mission in North Korea that would eventually cost him his father’s life too and lead to the life-changing decision of ending his military career.

But Lynch wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t be coming come.

Dan Riley had been first to die. He’d been shot four times defending others in the ambush before he succumbed to his wounds. Steve knew he had a daughter and a wife waiting for him back home. 

Liam Jackson had been shot in the face and was already dead when Steve looked back and saw him being dragged off the sidewalk. 

Ethan Lewis, Tom Jamison, and Chris Quinn. Those men were amongst the part of the team that got separated from theirs in the ambush along with Davis and Martinez. Steve would never see them again, never hear their voices. Their families would say goodbye, not knowing what exactly had happened to them. Hell, even Steve had no idea. 

Some of those who’d been killed had been found and retrieved thanks to Martinez’s and Davis’s information and Commander Turner’s orders. They had already been sent home in flag-draped coffins to their grieving families who were tasked with making funeral arrangements, their lives changed forever. 

The bodies of Jackson and Lewis were still missing, but Commander Turner had assured him they wouldn’t be left behind and he would do everything in his power to locate them and bring them home. 

Steve believed him. This wasn’t his first op under Turner’s command and Steve knew he was a good man. A man of his word. 

Too bad he wasn’t able to get some alone time with Turner to share his suspicion of being set up. He had no idea who the culprit was, and didn’t want to risk saying the wrong thing in front of the strangers. 

In his current condition, he wasn’t in a position to investigate it either. He would have to trust Five-0 who’d been working with Joe and Gutch for the past five days. The retired SEALs had decided to stay a little longer, certain they were on the right track. Joe hadn’t shared the details yet, but he seemed confident they would find the responsible person and bring them to justice.

Davis and Martinez stayed at the base too. They would be undergoing debriefings with intelligence people and shrinks for days before allowed the luxury of going home. That made Steve, Richardson, and Danny the only passengers on a huge plane, aside from the pilots and the medical team. 

When Steve wasn’t asleep, he kept his eyes closed anyway. Danny’s worried gaze was simply too much to take. The worry practically radiated from his friend’s tired eyes even though he didn’t say anything. 

Steve still couldn’t believe Danny had come looking for him. Again. Calling the SEAL team to handle the situation was one thing. But charging into a battle himself in such a terribly dangerous place was something Steve couldn’t envision. Danny and the rest of the Five-0 weren’t trained for this kind of ops, and yet they’ve flown across the globe and risked everything including their lives and facing jail time to find him. Without intel, without overwatch, without backup. It was extremely dangerous and outright crazy. Steve had no idea how could he ever repay that. 

It wasn’t until mid-flight Danny grew tired of his pretended sleep and Steve could feel his friend hovering over him. 

“You know, I can see your eyeballs rolling,” Danny said, forcing Steve to pry his eyelids open. “How are you feeling, buddy?”

He hurt. Everywhere. From his head to his toes, every cell in his body screamed in pain. The agony had been dulled out by the drugs is his bloodstream, making it bearable, but it was still there. His skin had been sliced and diced and his body had been used as a punching bag for a long time. Everything stung, burned, or throbbed, and an odd pulling and tugging of the stitches accompanied his every move. 

The cast on his left leg proved he’d been right about the bullet breaking a bone. At least the other leg wasn’t broken. But his right shoulder screamed in agony. The fibers of his tendons and ligaments had been torn from being strung up like a sack of meat. The doctor said it’d been dislocated too. It would need additional surgery back home. 

Steve was surprised when he was told that both, doctor Bishoff and Navy authorities, wanted him to go to the Tripler Army Medical Center for further stay, more tests, and surgery. He just wanted to go home. But it was either Tripler or not being moved to Hawaii at all, so Steve didn’t have much of a choice there.

“Steve?”

Steve looked up at Danny, who looked as though expecting him to say something. “Huh?” 

“I asked how are you feeling,” Danny reminded him.

Right. “Not too bad.” 

The lie felt almost natural. Danny didn’t need to know that every breath he took was misery. That he needed to steel himself for every painful move, no matter how small. That it cost him a tremendous amount of energy just to keep his eyes open. That he was scared he wouldn’t be able to walk properly once released from a hospital. That the overwhelming sadness threatened to suffocate him when thinking about his absent comrades. That he felt responsible for them not making it back home alive. His best friend had done more than enough and Steve didn’t want to burden him with that even more despite knowing Danny wouldn’t complain.

He didn’t want Danny to know he could see the pain in his eyes, although different from his own. He hated the way his best friend looked at him as if he was some broken doll slowly getting patched together again. He hated to see Danny so worried and clearly exhausted. 

It was obvious Danny didn’t believe him, but he let it slide. He picked up on Steve’s no-talking mood quickly and remained quiet, but didn’t leave. He took a seat next to Steve’s head and sat there in silence. Steve was grateful for that simple act. Danny’s presence couldn’t take all his pain away, but it was grounding and comforting in a way he couldn’t explain. The comfortable silence soothed him way more than any words would at the moment. 

He slept some more, and long hours later the plane finally landed in Honolulu. The relief of feeling the warm Hawaiian sun on his skin was short-lived, though, realizing he wouldn’t be able to enjoy it for a few more weeks. He was about to be loaded into an ambulance that had been waiting for their arrival, but the guy pushing his gurney stopped, making Steve frown in confusion. 

“I’ve got a little surprise for you,” Danny said with a smile stretched over his tired face. 

Steve didn’t get a chance to ask what was the surprise. He figured it out on his own when he heard two excited voices somewhere close.

“Uncle Steve!” 

He ignored a bout of pain spreading through his whole body after a sudden crash of two tiny bodies into his. 

“Be careful there,” Danny reminded. “Don’t break him.”

Steve didn’t mind. He wrapped his good arm around them both and squeezed, basking in their presence. He’d missed them so much it physically hurt. It was hard to believe he was finally hugging them.

“Hey, kiddos,” he managed a surprised croak. 

They let go way too soon, sprinting toward Danny with the same excitement when Steve’s gurney had been loaded into the ambulance. 

A lot of hugs were exchanged between the three of them before Danny let Kono, who stood aside quietly, take the kids again and joined Steve inside. 

“We’ll be right behind you,” Kono said to Danny. 

Steve saw a glimpse of Chin and Lou too before someone closed the door. He couldn’t believe they were all here, waiting for him to come home. His lips curled upward for the first time in weeks.

He couldn’t count how many times he had laid on the cold floor of his stinky cell, hurting and fighting the desperation, thinking about his ohana and how it would feel to see them again. It had been so frustrating, not knowing whether he would live long enough to be granted such a privilege.

But he had. And here he was, back home, surrounded by the people who loved him, and suddenly, although overwhelmed by sadness, he didn’t feel so lost.


	25. Chapter 25

Steve was back home. Maybe not home home, but back in Hawaii, back in the safety of the United States, back to his family. He was getting better by the day. Danny figured even despite the hell Steve had been through, he was able to handle whatever his freedom threw at him. It was going to be hard for both of them for a while, but great in the end. Everything Danny had hoped for, right?

But each day spent with Steve tended to prove to him it couldn’t be further from the truth. That this time Steve might not just bounce back easily like every single time before.

Steve’s cranky and agitated self was a welcome improvement over finding his best friend half-dead hanging from the ceiling like a sack of meat. However, with Steve’s strength and energy levels increasing slowly over the next few days, there was a lot more mental damage to deal with. 

Danny was grateful for his friends forcing him to take a break and let them take over for a couple of hours a day. He loved Steve, he really did, but the stubborn fool could easily earn a title of the worst patient in the world, and Danny really needed to clear his head from time to time so he wouldn’t punch his still recovering partner. 

There was no doubt that dealing with Steve’s mood and his ignoring of all the doctor’s orders, gave a headache to the poor nurses assigned to take care of him. He fought them on every occasion and pushed himself way too hard, as if trying to prove to everyone he could function on his own - which, unfortunately, he couldn’t. He just wasn’t there yet, but it seemed impossible to get that fact through the SEAL’s thick skull.

After five days in the Navy base medical center, a long flight home, and another two weeks in Tripler Army Medical Centre, Steve was finally supposed to be released tomorrow. But he still wouldn’t be going home, to his great frustration, and Danny didn’t envy the poor doctor who’d announced that to his friend and unleashed the monster within. 

“No way!” Steve growled, fire raging in his eyes when the doctor left them alone. “I’m not going to another hospital.”

“It’s not a hosp-” Danny didn’t have a chance to finish.

“It’s got ‘hospital’ in its name!” Steve protested. 

Danny breathed out an annoyed sigh. Steve’s transfer to REHAB hospital of the Pacific wasn’t negotiable. “It also got ‘REHAB’ in the name. And it’s still in Honolulu, so we’ll be able to visit.” 

“No.” Steve looked as though he was at the end of his rope, desperate to prove he could handle the basic necessities on his own so he could go home. But Danny knew better.

“Steve, you’ve heard the doc,” Danny said. “If you want to get back on your feet and regain full range of motion again, you have to go. You’ve come a long way in the past two weeks. Do you really want to jeopardize all that by being a stubborn pain in the ass?” 

Steve scrunched his brows and stabbed his eyes into Danny. “If I’m such a pain in the ass, why are you still here? I didn’t ask for your help. Or anyone else’s for that’s matter.”

Danny tried not to take it personally, yet those words hurt more than a punch in the gut. How could Steve ask such a stupid question? “What do you mean why am I still here? Where else would I be, you idiot?” Despite trying to keep his emotions under control, weeks of constant stress and worry let his pent-up anger seep into his voice. “You didn’t have to ask for help. That’s what family is for.”

“I’m fine, okay?” Steve snapped. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need another damn hospital. I just need to get the hell out of here.” 

“It’s just for two or three weeks. They’ll help you get moving again.”

“Are you not listening to me?” Steve’s anger now filled the whole room with tension. “I do not need help. I just want to go home.”

This was definitely one of those times Danny had to fight both of his conflicting feelings to either punch or hug his partner. His frown deepened when Steve shuffled into an uncomfortable-looking position, twisting his face into a painful grimace, and ripped the IV out of his arm. 

“What do you think you’re doing, Steven?” Danny practically yelled. 

“I’m gonna take a piss. Or do I need your approval for that? Am I your prisoner now?” The venom in Steve’s voice was hard to swallow, but Danny tried to ignore it, knowing the source of the anger. 

“You’re not anyone’s prisoner, all right?” he said, choosing his words carefully. 

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Steve, stop it.” Danny clenched his teeth with the image of his friend pushing himself up and sliding his feet off the bed. “You’ll hurt yourself. I’ll call the nurse. Or you can let me-”

“Let you what?” Steve snapped, struggling to hold himself in a sitting position. “Let you help me? I’m fed up with everyone, including my partner, trying to help me and tell me what to do. I’m not a child you can just order around.”

“Then stop acting like one!” Danny couldn’t help but raise his voice too. He readied himself, taking a few small steps closer in case Steve would decide to make a move he wasn’t ready for. Which came soon enough. 

Steve growled instead of an answer, and pressing his left hand against the nightstand and setting his still bandaged-up right foot on the floor, he stood up and shuffled toward the wheelchair that was just a few steps away. 

Danny didn’t care about Steve’s reaction. He leaped forward and it turned out to be a smart move as the SEAL’s knee buckled after an attempted ‘jump’ to get where he wanted to without putting weight on his broken ankle. He caught Steve mid-fall, preventing him from falling on the floor face-first, and helped him up. 

“What’s going on here?” The nurse’s terrified voice sounded from the doorway. 

“Steve wanted to use the bathroom,” Danny said, his arm wrapped around Steve’s midsection.

She was next to them in a second and helped Danny get Steve to the wheelchair. 

“Let go of me, I’m fine.” Steve trashed to slide himself out of their hold. 

The anger in his voice remained, but something in his eyes changed. They softened, and Danny could clearly see the defeat and a sense of failure in there. His heart cracked at that.

Danny waited in silence for the nurse to wheel his friend to the adjacent bathroom and back. Steve mumbled a few more angry sentences as the nurse helped him back to the bed and struggled to make him hold still so she could put an IV back while giving him a lecture.

She left them alone again after a while. Danny took in Steve’s defeated face and even an untrained eye could see he was in a lot of pain. No wonder after such a stunt. 

“I can ask the nurse to give you some more pain meds,” he offered after a few minutes of eerie silence.

Steve didn’t respond. His gaze was fixed right in front of him, distant as ever. 

Danny sat down and shuffled closer, hoping Steve would calm down for now. “I know you feel weak, Steve. But it’ll get better, all right? You’ll be back on your feet in no time. That’s why you need to go to the rehabilitation facility.”

No reaction.

“But maybe it’s not about the rehab. What’s the real problem, buddy? Talk to me,” Danny pleaded. He needed to get through the mask of anger Steve was wearing in order to help.

Steve’s gaze shifted to Danny’s. Gone was the defeat, his eyes burned with rage again. “Talk, huh? I don’t wanna talk. There is nothing to talk about. I’m fine.”

“Steve.”

“Just leave me the hell alone, Danny!” Steve yelled, curling his hand into a fist. “Get out, please.”

Danny froze, staring at his friend in disbelief, shocked to hear Steve asking for such a thing. He stood up and took a moment to think about a response that didn’t include anything he might regret saying later on. “If that’s what you want…”

“I do.”

His nostrils flared in anger as he turned around and walked away without further words, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

Danny was right. 

It wasn’t about the rehabilitation. Sure, he hated the idea of spending another two to three weeks in another hospital, and the fact he felt weak and needed help with basic necessities annoyed the crap out of him, but there was more. Much more. Something he couldn’t name, though. Something not visible.

He instantly regretted lashing out like that and yelling at the only person who had always stood by him no matter what.

There were times when he simply lost it. Being back home with his family and friends around and having so many people sending him things, wishing him well, showing such support, was overwhelming. 

His friends sent him gifts, cards, flowers, or balloons, and he couldn’t understand why he was rewarded for living when six of them had died. 

He couldn’t get over the guilt he felt. Why was everybody treating him like some kind of hero? There was nothing brave about what he’d been through as some of his friends thought. He had merely survived when other’s hadn’t. Not to mention he’d been responsible for bringing them home safe and failed. He wasn’t a good guy here, and the fact that no one understood that made his blood boil. Even though he knew his friends meant to help, it was confusing and overwhelming, and as much as he tried to fake it, he wasn’t dealing with it very well. 

Realizing it wasn’t Danny’s fault, he wished his friend would come back. But he didn’t and Steve couldn’t blame him. For every day that Steve was captured, Danny was in his own kind of prison. Steve thought that maybe he had it easier than his friend, since he knew what he was facing, knew the realities of his situation. Danny, on the other hand, had only his imagination to rely on, and that left a wide range of horrific possibilities for him to envision. 

Danny had skipped the long-awaited family holiday with his children, faced his fears, and basically become a part of an unofficial SEAL team in a hostile country. He’d spent a week in there, unable to do anything but wait and hope. He’d battled a dangerous enemy group without proper training or equipment. Hell, he’d even jumped out of a plane - a little secret Joe had told Steve earlier. And he’d barely moved from Steve’s bedside for five days after that. The man must’ve been exhausted to the bone, yet he was there for Steve, doing everything he could to make him feel better without a single word of complaint. And what did Steve do to thank him? 

Pushed him away. That’s what.

When the door opened a few minutes later, he hoped it would be Danny. It was hard to hide the disappointment when one of the nurses entered the room alone. Sure. What did he expect? Danny deserved better than taking in all of Steve’s anger and frustration. 

Even a few hours later his friend was still nowhere to be seen, so Steve gave up hoping for his return and decided to try and get some sleep to take his mind off everything for a few moments, but it turned out to be an impossible task. 

Nightmares of being trapped - both in combat sense, but also in everyday life - jolted him from his restless sleep. The dream images played in his mind like a horrifying slideshow with blood, gunfire, torture, and the faces of the dead. 

Even if he wasn’t a close friend with all of the guys, he still knew who they were, knew they had families. They were people with lives and dreams, forever turned into the dust. Gone. 

He could see them all. His men lined up in silence, their dead eyes starring at him, accusing him. They were right, though. That was the worst of it all. He should’ve done something. Maybe one different decision would change it all and they would still be here today. 

The screams were constantly echoing in his head. More and more ghosts came to haunt him, whether he was sleeping or awake and staring at the ceiling thinking again and again about the ambush and the eternity spent in a tiny cell. Or thinking about Danny and the rest of his friends and family, wishing they would all just stop worrying about a person not worth their love and help. To stop trying to save a monster who had let six good men die.

* * *

_Just leave me the hell alone, Danny! Get out, please._

It was on a nonstop loop in Danny’s head as he marched down the corridor and drove to the Five-0 headquarters. It was his day off so he could take his turn and spend a good part of the day with Steve, but he didn’t want to head home, where he wouldn’t be able to shut his brain off. He needed something to focus on. Something other than Steve desperately trying to push him and everyone else away. 

His colleagues found his presence suspicious, but after assessing Danny’s mood they wisely decided not to ask too much. Instead, they gave him something he needed so much - a case to work. Something totally unrelated to this whole clusterfuck. Unrelated to him, to Steve, to a mole in the Navy.

“Hey, Danny. You okay?” Chin glanced over at Danny where he shifted from foot to foot. No matter the stance, there was no escaping the raging anger bubbling inside him. 

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine, man,” Lou said, staring him up and down. “You look like you want to bite someone’s head off.”

“I’m good.” Their questions frustrated him, making him even more irritable. 

“Is something wrong with the boss?” Kono didn’t stay behind. “I thought he was doing good.”

“No. Yes. I.. I don’t know.” Danny squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and pinched the base of his nose. “He refuses the rehabilitation facility. To prove me he doesn’t need it the damn fool decided to go to the bathroom on his own and fell and…”

“Did he hurt himself?” Kono’s eyes grew wider.

Danny shook his head. “I caught him but… uh, you should’ve seen that look in his eyes when he realized how weak he really is. He got angry and said… he said stuff and kicked me out of there.”

Chin’s hand handed on Danny’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze. “You know he didn’t mean it, right?” 

Of course Danny knew. He nodded. 

“He’s been in a bed for nearly three weeks now, he’s just a little cranky,” Chin said. 

“A little doesn’t cut it, Chin. He’s so angry every time I go see him. And he won’t talk to me, at least not the way that would help.” 

“Give him time, bruddah. He’s been through a lot and he needs time to process it all. But he’ll get there. We’ll make sure of it.”

“Yeah, he’s not alone,” Kono said. 

Danny forced a smile. “I hope so.” 

“I’ll go talk to him,” Chin offered. 

Not sure whether his older colleague would have more luck, Danny accepted the offer with a silent nod. 

Despite Steve’s return and improving health, they started off bad, and he could only wonder how much worse it would get before it would get better. The feeling in his gut told him there would be a lot more struggle. But it would be all worth it if it meant getting Steve back on track.


End file.
